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THE COLLECTED WORKS
OF AMBROSE BIERCE

VOLUME VIII

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The publishers certify that this edition of

THE COLLECTED WORKS OF
AMBROSE BIERCE

consists of two hundred and fifty numbered sets, auto-
graphed by the author, and that the number of this
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Copyright, 191 i, by
The Neale Publishing Company

CONTENTS

PAGE

NEGLIGIBLE TALES

A Bottomless Grave ...... 9

Jupiter Doke, Brigadier-General . . . . 23

The Widower Turmore . . . ' . . . 41

The City of the Gone Away . . . . . 53

The Major's Tale . 63

Curried Cow 76

A Revolt of the Gods 89

The Baptism of Dobsho 95

The Race at Left Bower 104.

The Failure of Hope & Wandel . . . . 110

Perry Chumly's Eclipse 115

A Providential Intimation . . . . . 123

Mr. Swiddler's Flip-Flap . . . . . .131

The Little Story 138

THE PARENTICIDE CLUB

My Favorite Murder ...... 147

Oil of Dog . . . .* . . . .163

An Imperfect Conflagration . . . . . 171

The Hypnotist .177

THE FOURTH ESTATE

Mr, Masthead, Journalist 187

Why I AM NOT Editing " The Stinger "... 195

Corrupting the Press 204

"The Bubble Reputation" 2n

A OK Q A^ "^

CONTENTS

THE OCEAN WAVE
A Shipwreckollection
The Captain of "The Camel"
The Man Overboard
A Cargo of Cat

2X9
226

258

ON WITH THE DANCE! " A REVIEW

The Prude in Letters and Life

The Beating of the Blood

There are Corns in Egypt

A Reef in the Gabardine

Enter a Troupe of Ancients, Dancing

Cairo Revisited

Japan Wear and Bombay Ducks
In the Bottom of the Crucible
Counsel for the Defense .
They all Dance ....
Lust, Quoth'a . . . . .
Our Grandmothers' Legs .

267
270
276
282
285
296
299

3"
316
331

330
33*

EPIGRAMS 343.

NEGLIGIBLE TALES

A BOTTOMLESS GRAVE

MY name is John Brenwalter. My
father, a drunkard, had a patent
for an invention for making cof-
fee-berries out of clay; but he
was an honest man and would not himself en-
gage in the manufacture. He was, therefore,
only moderately wealthy, his royalties from his
really valuable invention bringing him hardly
enough to pay his expenses of litigation with
rogues guilty of infringement. So I lacked
many advantages enjoyed by the children of
unscrupulous and dishonorable parents, and
had it not been for a noble and devoted
mother, who neglected all my brothers and
sisters and personally supervised my educa-
tion, should have grown up in ignorance and
been compelled to teach school. To be the
favorite child of a good woman is better than
gold.

When I was nineteen years of age my father
had the misfortune to die. He had always had
perfect health, and his death, which occurred

10 THE COLLECTED WORKS

at the dinner table without a moment's warn-
ing, surprised no one more than himself. He
had that very morning been notified that a
patent had been granted him for a device to
burst open safes by hydraulic pressure, with-
out noise. The Commissioner of Patents had
pronounced it the most ingenious, effective
and generally meritorious invention that had
ever been submitted to him, and my father had
naturally looked forward to an old age of
prosperity and honor. His sudden death was,
therefore, a deep disappointment to him; but
my mother, whose piety and resignation to the
will of Heaven were conspicuous virtues of
her character, was apparently less affected. At
the close of the meal, when my poor father's
body had been removed from the floor, she
called us all into an adjoining room and ad-
dressed us as follows :

"My children, the uncommon occurrence
that you have just witnessed is one of the most
disagreeable incidents in a good man's life,
and one in which I take little pleasure, I as-
sure you. I beg you to believe that I had no
hand in bringing it about. Of course," she
added, after a pause, during which her eyes
were cast down in deep thought, "of course
it is better that he is dead."

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 11

She uttered this with so evident a sense of
its obviousness as a self-evident truth that none
of us had the courage to brave her surprise by
asking an explanation. My mother's air of
surprise when any of us went wrong in any
way was very terrible to us. One day, when
in a fit of peevish temper, I had taken the lib-
erty to cut off the baby's ear, her simple words,
"John, you surprise me!" appeared to me so
sharp a reproof that after a sleepless night I
went to her in tears, and throwing myself at
her feet, exclaimed: "Mother, forgive me for
surprising you." So now we all — including
the one-eared baby — felt that it would keep
matters smoother to accept without question
the statement that it was better, somehow, for
our dear father to be dead. My mother con-
tinued:

"I must tell you, my children, that in a case
of sudden and mysterious death the law re-
quires the Coroner to come and cut the body
into pieces and submit them to a number of
men who, having inspected them, pronounce
the person dead. For this the Coroner gets a
large sum of money. I wish to avoid that pain-
ful formality in this instance; it is one which
never had the approval of — of the remains.
John" — here my mother turned her angel face

12 THE COLLECTED WORKS

to me — "you are an educated lad, and very dis-
creet. You have now an opportunity to show
your gratitude for all the sacrifices that your
education has entailed upon the rest of us.
John, go and remove the Coroner."

Inexpressibly delighted by this proof of my
mother's confidence, and by the chance to dis-
tinguish myself by an act that squared with
my natural disposition, I knelt before her, car-
ried her hand to my lips and bathed it with
tears of sensibility. Before five o'clock that
afternoon I had removed the Coroner.

I was immediately arrested and thrown into
jail, where I passed a most uncomfortable
night, being unable to sleep because of the pro-
fanity of my fellow-prisoners, two clergymen,
whose theological training had given them a
fertility of impious ideas and a command of
blasphemous language altogether unpar-
alleled. But along toward morning the jailer,
who, sleeping in an adjoining room, had been
equally disturbed, entered the cell and with a
fearful oath warned the reverend gentlemen
that if he heard any more swearing their
sacred calling would not prevent him from
turning them into the street. After that they
moderated their objectionable conversation,
substituting an accordion, and I slept the

OP AMBROSE BIERCE 13

peaceful and refreshing sleep of youth and
innocence.

The next morning I was taken before the
Superior Judge, sitting as a committing mag-
istrate, and put upon my preliminary examin-
ation. I pleaded not guilty, adding that the
man whom I had murdered was a notorious
Democrat. (My good mother was a Repub-
lican, and from early childhood I had been
carefully instructed by her in the principles
of honest government and the necessity of sup-
pressing factional opposition.) The Judge,
elected by a Republican ballot-box with a slid-
ing bottom, was visibly impressed by the
cogency of my plea and offered me a cigarette.

"May it please your Honor," began the Dis-
trict Attorney, "I do not deem it necessary to
submit any evidence in this case. Under the
law of the land you sit here as a committing
magistrate. It is therefore your duty to com-
mit. Testimony and argument alike would
imply a doubt that your Honor means to per-
form your sworn duty. That is my case."

My counsel, a brother of the deceased
Coroner, rose and said: "May it please the
Court, my learned friend on the other side has
so well and eloquently stated the law govern-
ing in this case that it only remains for me to

14 THE COLLECTED WORKS

inquire to what extent it has been already com-
plied with. It is true, your Honor is a com-
mitting magistrate, and as such it is your duty
to commit — ^what? That is a matter which
the law has wisely and justly left to your own
discretion, and wisely you have discharged al-
ready every obligation that the law imposes.
Since I have known your Honor you have
done nothing but commit. You have com-
mitted embracery, theft, arson, perjury, adult-
ery, murder — every crime in the calendar
and every excess known to the sensual and de-
praved, including my learned friend, the Dis-
trict Attorney. You have done your whole
duty as a committing magistrate, and as there
is no evidence against this worthy young man,
my client, I move that he be discharged."

An impressive silence ensued. The Judge
arose, put on the black cap and in a voice
trembling with emotion sentenced me to life
and liberty. Then turning to my counsel he
said, coldly but significantly:

"I will see you later."

The next morning the lawyer who had so
conscientiously defended me against a charge
of murdering his own brother — with whom he
had a quarrel about some land — had disap-
peared and his fate is to this day unknown.

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 15

In the meantime my poor father's body had
been secretly buried at midnight in the back
yard of his late residence, with his late boots
on and the contents of his late stomach un-
analyzed. "He was opposed to display," said
my dear mother, as she finished tamping down
the earth above him and assisted the children
to litter the place with straw; "his in-
stincts were all domestic and he loved a quiet
life."

My mother's application for letters of ad-
ministration stated that she had good reason
to believe that the deceased was dead, for he
had not come home to his meals for several
days; but the Judge of the Crowbait Court —
as she ever afterward contemptuously called
it — decided that the proof of death was in-
sufficient, and put the estate into the hands of
the Public Administrator, who was his son-
in-law. It was found that the liabilities were
exactly balanced by the assets ; there was left
only the patent for the device for bursting
open safes without noise, by hydraulic press-
ure and this had passed into the ownership of
the Probate Judge and the Public Adminis-
traitor — as my dear mother preferred to spell
it. Thus, within a few brief months a worthy
and respectable family was reduced from pros-

16 THE COLLECTED WORKS

perity to crime; necessity compelled us to go
to work.

In the selection of occupations we were gov-
erned by a variety of considerations, such as
personal fitness, inclination, and so forth. My
mother opened a select private school for in-
struction in the art of changing the spots upon
leopard-skin rugs; my eldest brother, George
Henry, who had a turn for music, became a
bugler in a neighboring asylum for deaf
mutes; my sister, Mary Maria, took orders for
Professor Pumpernickel's Essence of Latch-
keys for flavoring mineral springs, and I set up
as an adjuster and gilder of crossbeams for
gibbets. The other children, too young for
labor, continued to steal small articles exposed
in front of shops, as they had been taught.

In our intervals of leisure we decoyed trav-
elers into our house and buried the bodies in a
cellar.

In one part of this cellar we kept wines,
liquors and provisions. From the rapidity of
their disappearance we acquired the supersti-
tious belief that the spirits of the persons
buried there came at dead of night and held
a festival. It was at least certain that fre-
quently of a morning we would discover frag-
jrnents of pickled nieats, canned goods and

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 17

such debris, littering the place, although it
had been securely locked and barred against
human intrusion. It was proposed to remove
the provisions and store them elsewhere, but
our dear mother, always generous and hos-
pitable, said it was better to endure the loss
than risk exposure: if the ghosts were denied
this trifling gratification they might set on
foot an investigation, which would overthrow
our scheme of the division of labor, by divert-
ing the energies of the whole family into the
single industry pursued by me — ^we might all
decorate the cross-beams of gibbets. We
accepted her decision with filial submission,
due to our reverence for her wordly wisdom
and the purity of her character.

One night while we were all in the cellar —
none dared to enter it alone — engaged in
bestowing upon the Mayor of an adjoining
town the solemn offices of Christian burial, my
mother and the younger children, holding a
candle each, while George Henry and I
labored with a spade and pick, my sister Mary
Maria uttered a shriek and covered her eyes
with her hands. We were all dreadfully
startled and the Mayor's obsequies were
instantly suspended, while with pale faces and
in trembling tones we begged her to say what

18 THE COLLECTED WORKS

had alarmed her. The younger children were
so agitated that they held their candles
unsteadily, and the waving shadows of our
figures danced with uncouth and grotesque
movements on the walls and flung themselves
into the most uncanny attitudes. The face of
the dead man, now gleaming ghastly in the
light, and now extinguished by some floating
shadow, appeared at each emergence to have
taken on a new and more forbidding expres-
sion, a maligner menace. Frightened even
more than ourselves by the girl's scream, rats
raced in multitudes about the place, squeaking
shrilly, or starred the black opacity of some
distant corner with steadfast eyes, mere points
of green light, matching the faint phosphor-
escence of decay that filled the half-dug grave
and seemed the visible manifestation of that
faint odor of mortality which tainted the un-
wholesome air. The children now sobbed and
clung about the limbs of their elders, dropp-
ing their candles, and we were near being
left in total darkness, except for that sinis-
ter light, which slowly welled upward from
the disturbed earth and overflowed the edges
of the grave like a fountain.

Meanwhile my sister, crouching in the earth
that had been thrown out of the excavation,

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 19

had removed her hands from her face and was
staring with expanded eyes into an obscure
space between two wine casks.

"There it is! — there it is!" she shrieked,
pointing; "God in heaven! can't you see it?"

And there indeed it was! — a human figure,
dimly discernible in the gloom — a figure that
wavered from side to side as if about to fall,
clutching at the wine-casks for support, had
stepped unsteadily forward and for one
moment stood revealed in the light of our
remaining candles ; then it surged heavily and
fell prone upon the earth. In that moment we
had all recognized the figure, the face and
bearing of our father — dead these ten months
and buried by our own hands! — our father
indubitably risen and ghastly drunk!

On the incidents of our precipitate flight
from that horrible place — on the extinction of
all human sentiment in that tumultuous, mad
scramble up the damp and mouldy stairs —
slipping, falling, pulling one another down
and clambering over one another's back — the
lights extinguished, babes trampled beneath
the feet of their strong brothers and hurled
backward to death by a mother's arm! — on all
this I do not dare to dwell. My mother, my
eldest brother and sister and I escaped; the

20 THE COLLECTED WORKS

others remained below, to perish of their
wounds, or of their terror — some, perhaps, by
flame. For within an hour we four, hastily
gathering together what money and jewels we
had and what clothing we could carry, fired
the dwelling and fled by its light into the hills.
We did not even pause to collect the insurance,
and my dear mother said on her death-bed,
years afterward in a distant land, that this
was the only sin of omission that lay upon her
conscience. Her confessor, a holy man, assured
her that under the circumstances Heaven
would pardon the neglect.

About ten years after our removal from the
scenes of my childhood I, then a prosperous
forger, returned in disguise to the spot with a
view to obtaining, if possible, some treasure
belonging to us, which had been buried in the
cellar. I may say that I was unsuccessful : the
discovery of many human bones in the ruins
had set the authorities digging for more. They
had found the treasure and had kept it for
their honesty. The house had not been rebuilt;
the whole suburb was, in fact, a desolation. So
many unearthly sights and sounds had been
reported thereabout that nobody would live
there. As there was none to question nor
molest, I resolved to gratify my filial piety by

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 21

gazing once more upon the face of my beloved
father, if indeed our eyes had deceived us and
he was still in his grave. I remembered, too,
that he had always worn an enormous
diamond ring, and never having seen it nor
heard of it since his death, I had reason to
think he might have been buried in it. Pro-
curing a spade, I soon located the grave in
what had been the backyard and began digg-
ing. When I had got down about four feet
the whole bottom fell out of the grave and I
was precipitated into a large drain, falling
through a long hole in its crumbling arch.
There was no body, nor any vestige of one.

Unable to get out of the excavation, I crept
through the drain, and having with some diffi-
culty removed a mass of charred rubbish and
blackened masonry that choked it, emerged
into what had been that fateful cellar.

All was clear. My father, whatever had
caused him to be "taken bad" at his meal
(and I think my sainted mother could have
thrown some light upon that matter) had
indubitably been buried alive. The grave hav-
ing been accidentally dug above the forgotten
drain, and down almost to the crown of its
arch, and no coffin having been used, his strug-
gles on reviving had broken the rotten ma-

22 THE COLLECTED WORKS

soniy and he had fallen through, escaping
finally into the cellar. Feeling that he was
not welcome in his own house, yet having no
other, he had lived in subterranean seclusion,
a witness to our thrift and a pensioner on our
providence. It was he who had eaten our
food ; it was he who had drunk our wine — he
was no better than a thief I In a moment of in-
toxication, and feeling, no doubt, that need of
companionship which is the one sympathetic
link between a drunken man and his race, he
had left his place of concealment at a strangely
inopportune time, entailing the most deplor-
able consequences upon those nearest and dear-
est to him — a blunder that had almost the dig-
nity of crime.

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 23

JUPITER DOKE, BRIGADIER-
GENERAL

From the Secretary of War to the Hon,
Jupiter Doke, Hardpan Crossroads, Posey
County, Illinois.

Washington, November 3, 1861.

HAVING faith in your patriotism
and ability, the President has
been pleased to appoint you a
brigadier-general of volunteers.
Do you accept?

From the Hon. Jupiter Doke to the Secretary
of War,

Hardpan, Illinois, November 9, 1861.
It is the proudest moment of my life. The
office is one which should be neither sought
nor declined. In times that try men's souls the
patriot knows no North, no South, no East, no
West. His motto should be: "My country,
my whole country and nothing but my

24 THE COLLECTED WORKS

country." I accept the great trust confided in
me by a free and intelligent people, and with a
firm reliance on the principles of constitu-
tional liberty, and invoking the guidance of an
all-wise Providence, Ruler of Nations, shall
labor so to discharge it as to leave no blot upon
my political escutcheon. Say to his Excell-
ency, the successor of the immortal Washing-
ton in the Seat of Power, that the patronage of
my office will be bestowed with an eye single
to securing the greatest good to the greatest
number, the stability of republican institu-
tions and the triumph of the party in all elec-
tions ; and to this I pledge my life, my fortune
and my sacred honor. I shall at once prepare
an appropriate response to the speech of the
chairman of the committee deputed to inform
me of my appointment, and I trust the senti-
ments therein expressed will strike a sympath-
etic chord in the public heart, as well as
command the Executive approval.

From the Secretary of War to Major-General
Blount Wardorg, Commanding the Mill-
tary Department of Eastern Kentucky,

Washington, November 14, 1861.
I have assigned to your department Brigad-

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 25

ier-General Jupiter Doke, who will soon pro-
ceed to Distilleryville, on the Little Butter-
milk River, and take command of the Illinois
Brigade at that point, reporting to you by
letter for orders. Is the route from Covington
by way of Bluegrass, Opossum Corners and
Horsecave still infested with bushwackers, as
reported in your last dispatch? I have a plan
for cleaning them out.

From Major-General Blount Wardorg to the
Secretary of War,

Louisville, Kentucky,
November 20, 1861.

The name and services of Brigadier-General
Doke are unfamiliar to me, but I shall be
pleased to have the advantage of his skill. The
route from Covington to Distilleryville via
Opossum Corners and Horsecave I have been
compelled to abandon to the enemy, whose
guerilla warfare made it possible to keep it
open without detaching too many troops from
the front. The brigade at Distilleryville is
supplied by steamboats up the Little Butter-
milk.

26 THE COLLECTED WORKS

From the Secretary of War to Brigadier-Gen-
eral Jupiter Doke, Hardpan, Illinois.

Washington, November 26, 1861.

I deeply regret that your commission had
been forwarded by mail before the receipt of
your letter of acceptance ; so we must dispense
with the formality of official notification to
you by a committee. The President is highly
gratified by the noble and patriotic sentiments
of your letter, and directs that you proceed at
once to your command at Distilleryville, Ken-
tucky, and there report by letter to Major-
General Wardorg at Louisville, for orders. It
is important that the strictest secrecy be ob-
served regarding your movements until you
have passed Covington, as it is desired to hold
the enemy in front of Distilleryville until you
are within three days of him. Then if your
approach is known it will operate as a demon-
stration against his right and cause him to
strengthen it with his left now at Memphis,
Tennessee, which it is desirable to capture
first. Go by way of Bluegrass, Opossum Cor-
ners and Horsecave. All officers are expected
to be in full uniform when en route to the
front.

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 27

From Brigadier-General Jupiter Doke to the
Secretary of War,

Covington, Kentucky, December 7, 1861.

I arrived yesterday at this point, and have
given my proxy to Joel Briller, Esq., my wife's
cousin, and a staunch Republican, who will
worthily represent Posey County in field and
forum. He points with pride to a stainless
record in the halls of legislation, which have
often echoed to his soul-stirring eloquence on
questions which lie at the very foundation of
popular government. He has been called the
Patrick Henry of Hardpan, where he has done
yeoman's service in the cause of civil and
religious liberty. Mr. Briller left for Distill-
eryville last evening, and the standard bearer
of the Democratic host confronting that
stronghold of freedom will find him a lion in
his path. I have been asked to remain here
and deliver some addresses to the people in
a local contest involving issues of paramount
importance. That duty being performed, I
shall in person enter the arena of armed
debate and move in the direction of the heavi-
est firing, burning my ships behind me. I for-
ward by this mail to his Excellency the Presid-
ent a request for the appointment of my son,

28 THE COLLECTED WORKS

Jabez Leonidas Doke, as postmaster at Hard-
pan. I would take it, sir, as a great favor if
you would give the application a strong oral
indorsement, as the appointment is in the line
of reform. Be kind enough to inform me what
are the emoluments of the office I hold in the
military arm, and if they are by salary or fees.
Are there any perquisites? My mileage
account will be transmitted monthly.

From Brigadier-General Jupiter Doke to
Major General Blount Wardorg.

DiSTILLERYVILLE, KENTUCKY,
January 12, 1862.
I arrived on the tented field yesterday by
steamboat, the recent storms having inundated
the landscape, covering, I understand, the
greater part of a congressional district. I am
pained to find that Joel Briller, Esq., a prom-
inent citizen of Posey County, Illinois, and a
far-seeing statesman who held my proxy, and
who a month ago should have been thunder-
ing at the gates of Disunion, has not been
heard from, and has doubtless been sacrificed
upon the altar of his country. In him the
American people lose a bulwark of freedom.

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 29

I would respectfully move that you designate
a committee to draw up resolutions of respect
to his memory, and that the office holders and
men under your command wear the usual
badge of mourning for thirty days. I shall at
once place myself at the head of affairs here,
and am now ready to entertain any suggestions
which you may make, looking to the better
enforcement of the laws in this common-
wealth. The militant Democrats on the other
side of the river appear to be contemplating
extreme measures. They have two large can-
nons facing this way, and yesterday morning,
I am told, some of them came down to the
water's edge and remained in session for some
time, making infamous allegations.

From the Diary of Brigadier-General Jupiter
Doke, at Distilleryville, Kentucky,

January 12, 1862. — On my arrival yesterday
at the Henry Clay Hotel (named in honor of
the late far-seeing statesman) I was waited on
by a delegation consisting of the three colonels
intrusted with the command of the regiments
of my brigade. It was an occasion that will
be mempr^bk in the political annals of

80 THE COLLECTED WORKS

America. Forwarded copies of the speeches
to the Posey Maverick, to be spread upon the
record of the ages. The gentlemen compos-
ing the delegation unanimously reaffirmed
their devotion to the principles of national
unity and the Republican party. Was grati-
fied to recognize in them men of political
prominence and untarnished escutcheons. At
the subsequent banquet, sentiments of lofty
patriotism were expressed. Wrote to Mr.
Wardorg at Louisville for instructions.

January 13, 1862. — Leased a prominent
residence (the former incumbent being absent
in arms against his country) for the term of
one year, and wrote at once for Mrs. Brigad-
ier-General Doke and the vital issues — except-
ing Jabez Leonidas. In the camp of treason
opposite here there are supposed to be three
thousand misguided men laying the ax at the
root of the tree of liberty. They have a clear
majority, many of our men having returned
without leave to their constituents. We could
probably not poll more than two thousand
votes. Have advised my heads of regiments
to make a canvass of those remaining, all bolt-
ers to be read out of the phalanx.

January 14, 1862. — ^Wrote to the President,
asking for the contract to supply this com-

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 31

mand with firearms and regalia through my
brother-in-law, prominently identified with
the manufacturing interests of the country.
Club of cannon soldiers arrived at Jayhawk,
three miles back from here, on their way to
join us in battle array. Marched my whole
brigade to Jayhawk to escort them into town,
but their chairman, mistaking us for the oppos-
ing party, opened fire on the head of the pro-
cession and by the extraordinary noise of the
cannon balls (I had no conception of it!) so
frightened my horse that I was unseated with-
out a contest. The meeting adjourned in dis-
order and returning to camp I found that a
deputation of the enemy had crossed the river
in our absence and made a division of the
loaves and fishes. Wrote to the President,
applying for the Gubernatorial Chair of the
Territory of Idaho.

From Editorial Article in the Posey, Illinois,
''Maverick/' January 20, 1862.

Brigadier-General Doke's thrilling account,
in another column, of the Battle of Distillery-
ville will make the heart of every loyal Illi-
noisian leap with exultation. The brilliant

32 THE COLLECTED WORKS

exploit marks an era in military history, and
as General Doke says, "lays broad and deep
the foundations of American prowess in
arms." As none of the troops engaged, except
the gallant author-chieftain (a host in him-
self) hails from Posey County, he justly con-
sidered that a list of the fallen would only
occupy our valuable space to the exclusion of
more important matter, but his account of the
strategic ruse by which he apparently aban-
doned his camp and so inveigled a perfidious
enemy into it for the purpose of murdering
the sick, the unfortunate countertempus at
Jayhawk, the subsequent dash upon a trapped
enemy flushed with a supposed success, driv-
ing their terrified legions across an impassable
river which precluded pursuit — all these
"moving accidents by flood and field" are
related with a pen of fire and have all the terr-
ible interest of romance.

Verily, truth is stranger than fiction and the
pen is mightier than the sword. When by the
graphic power of the art preservative of all
arts we are brought face to face with such
glorious events as these, the Maverick's enter-
prise in securing for its thousands of readers
the services of so distinguished a contributor
as the Great Captain who made the history as

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 33

well as wrote it seems a matter of almost
secondary importance. For President in 1864
(subject to the decision of the Republican
National Convention) Brigadier-General
Jupiter Doke, of Illinois 1

From Major-General Blount \JVardorg to
Brigadier-General Jupiter Doke,

Louisville, January 22, 1862.
Your letter apprising me of your arrival at
Distilleryville was delayed in transmission,
having only just been received (open)
through the courtesy of the Confederate
department commander under a flag of truce.
He begs me to assure you that he would con-
sider it an act of cruelty to trouble you, and I
think it would be. Maintain, however, a
threatening attitude, but at the least pressure
retire. Your position is simply an outpost
which it is not intended to hold.

From Major-General Blount Wardorg to the
Secretary of War,

Louisville, January 23, 1862.
I have certain information that the enemy
has concentrated twenty thousand troops of all

34 THE COLLECTED WORKS

arms on the Little Buttermilk. According to
your assignment, General Doke is in command
of the small brigade of raw troops opposing
them. It is no part of my plan to contest the
enemy's advance at that point, but I cannot
hold myself responsible for any reverses to
the brigade mentioned, under its present com-
mander. I think him a fool.

From the Secretary of \fVar to Major-General
Blount Ward org,

Washington, February i, 1862.
The President has great faith in General
Doke. If your estimate of him is correct,
however, he would seem to be singularly well
placed where he now is, as your plans appear
to contemplate a considerable sacrifice for
whatever advantages you expect to gain.

From Brigadier-General Jupiter Doke to
Major-General Blount Wardorg,

DiSTiLLERYVlLLE, February i, 1862.
To-morrow I shall remove my headquarters
to Jayhawk in order to point the way when-

OF AMBROSE BIERCE

35

ever my brigade retires from Distilleryville,
as foreshadowed by your letter of the 22d ult.
I have appointed a Committee on Retreat, the
minutes of whose first meeting I transmit to
you. You will perceive that the committee
having been duly organized by the election of
a chairman and secretary, a resolution (pre-
pared by myself) was adopted, to the effect
that in case treason again raises her hideous
head on this side of the river every man of the
brigade is to mount a mule, the procession to
move promptly in the direction of Louisville
and the loyal North. In preparation for such
an emergency I have for some time been col-
lecting mules from the resident Democracy,
and have on hand 2300 in a field at Jayhawk.
Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty!

From Major-General Gibeon J, Buxter, C S.
A,, to the Confederate Secretary of War,

Bung Station, Kentucky,

February 4, 1862.

On the night of the 2d inst., our entire force,

consisting of 25,000 men and thirty-two field

pieces, under command of Major-General

Simmons B. Flood, crossed by a ford to the

36 THE COLLECTED WORKS

north side of Little Buttermilk River at a
point three miles above Distilleryville and
moved obliquely down and av^ay from the
stream, to strike the Covington turnpike at
Jayhawk; the object being, as you know, to
capture Covington, destroy Cincinnati and
occupy the Ohio Valley. For some months
there had been in our front only a small brig-
ade of undisciplined troops, apparently with-
out a commander, who were useful to us, for
by not disturbing them we could create an
impression of our weakness. But the move-
ment on Jayhawk having isolated them, I was
about to detach an Alabama regiment to bring
them in, my division being the leading one,
when an earth-shaking rumble was felt and
heard, and suddenly the head-of-column was
struck by one of the terrible tornadoes for
which this region is famous, and utterly anni-
hilated. The tornado, I believe, passed along
the entire length of the road back to the ford,
dispersing or destroying our entire army; but
of this I cannot be sure, for I was lifted from
the earth insensible and blown back to the
south side of the river. Continuous firing all
night on the north side and the reports of such
of our men as have recrossed at the ford con-
vince me that the Yankee brigade has exterm-

OF AMBROSE BIERCE

37

inated the disabled survivors. Our loss has
been uncommonly heavy. Of my own divi-
sion of 15,000 infantry, the casualties — killed,
wounded, captured, and missing — are 14,994.
Of General Dolliver Billow's division, 11,200
strong, I can find but two ofEcers and a nigger
cook. Of the artillery, 800 men, none has
reported on this side of the river. General
Flood is dead. I have assumed command of
the expeditionary force, but owing to the
heavy losses have deemed it advisable to con-
tract my line of supplies as rapidly as possible.
I shall push southward to-morrow morning
early. The purposes of the campaign have
been as yet but partly accomplished.

From Major 'General Dolliver Billows, C. S,
A., to the Confederate Secretary of War,

BuHAC, Kentucky, February 5, 1862.
. . . But during the 2d they had, unknown
to us, been reinforced by fifty thousand cav-
alry, and being apprised of our movement by
a spy, this vast body was drawn up in the dark-
ness at Jayhawk, and as the head of our col-
umn reached that point at about 1 1 P. M., fell
upon it with astonishing fury, destroying the

38 THE COLLECTED WORKS

division of General Buxter in an instant. Gen-
eral Baumschank's brigade of artillery, which
was in the rear, may have escaped — I did not
wait to see, but withdrew my division to the
river at a point several miles above the ford,
and at daylight ferried it across on two fence
rails lashed together with a suspender. Its
losses, from an effective strength of 11,200,
are 11,199. General Buxter is dead. I am
changing my base to Mobile, Alabama.

From Brigadier-General Schneddeker Baum-
schank, C. S. A., to the Confederate Secre-
tary of War,

Iodine, Kentucky, February 6, 1862.
. . . Yoost den somdings occur, I know nod
vot it vos — somdings mackneefcent, but it vas
nod vor — und I finds meinselluf, afder leedle
viles, in dis blace, midout a hors und mit no
men und goons. Sheneral Peelows is deadt
You will blease be so goot as to resign me — I
vights no more in a dam gontry vere I gets
vipped und knows nod how it vos done.

Resolutions of Congress, February 15, 1862.

Resolved, That the thanks of Congress are
due, and hereby tendered, to Brigadier-Gen-

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 39

eral Jupiter Doke and the gallant men under
his command for their unparalleled feat of at-
tacking— themselves only 2000 strong — an
army of 25,000 men and utterly overthrowing
it, killing 5327, making prisoners of 19,003, of
whom more than half were wounded, taking
32 guns, 20,000 stand of small arms and, in
short, the enemy's entire equipment.

Resolved, That for this unexampled victory
the President be requested to designate a day
of thanksgiving and public celebration of
religious rites in the various churches.

Resolved, That he be requested, in further
commemoration of the great event, and in
reward of the gallant spirits whose deeds have
added such imperishable lustre to the Americ-
an arms, to appoint, with the advice and con-
sent of the Senate, the following officer:

One major-general.

Statement of Mr. Hannibal Alcazar Peyton,
of Jay hawk, Kentucky,

Dat wus a almighty dark night, sho', and
dese yere ole eyes aint wuf shuks, but I's got
a year like a sque'l, an' w'en I cotch de mum-
mer o' v'ices I knowed dat gang b'long on de

40 THE COLLECTED WORKS

far side o' de ribber. So I jes' runs in de house
an' wakes Marse Doke an' tells him: "Skin
outer dis fo' yo' life!" An' de Lo'd bress my
soul! ef dat man didn' go right fru de winder
in his shir' tail an' break for to cross de mule
patch! An' dem twenty-free hunerd mules
dey jes' t'nk it is de debble hese'f wid de bran-
din' iron, an' dey bu'st outen dat patch like a
yarthquake, an' pile inter de upper ford road,
an' flash down it five deep, an' it full o' Con-
fed'rates from en' to en'I . . .

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 41

THE WIDOWER TURMORE

THE circumstances under which
Joram Turmore became a widower
have never been popularly under-
stood. I know them, naturally, for
I am Joram Turmore; and my wife, the
late Elizabeth Mary Turmore, is by no
means ignorant of them; but although she
doubtless relates them, yet they remain a
secret, for not a soul has ever believed her.

When I married Elizabeth Mary Johnin
she was very wealthy, otherwise I could
hardly have afforded to marry, for I had not
a cent, and Heaven had not put into my heart
any intention to earn one. I held the Profess-
orship of Cats in the University of Gray-
maulkin, and scholastic pursuits had unfitted
me for the heat and burden of business or
labor. Moreover, I could not forget that I
was a Turmore — a member of a family whose
motto from the time of William of Normandy
has been Lab or are est err are. The only known
infraction of the sacred family tradition oc-
curred when Sir Aldebaran Turmore de

42 THE COLLECTED WORKS

Peters-Turmore, an illustrious master burglar
of the seventeenth century, personally assisted
at a difficult operation undertaken by some of
his workmen. That blot upon our escutcheon
cannot be contemplated without the most
poignant mortification.

My incumbency of the Chair of Cats in the
Graymaulkin University had not, of course,
been marked by any instance of mean industry.
There had never, at any one time, been more
than two students of the Noble Science, and
by merely repeating the manuscript lectures
of my predecessor, which I had found among
his effects (he died at sea on his way to Malta) I
could sufficiently sate their famine for knowl-
edge without really earning even the distinc-
tion which served in place of salary.

Naturally, under the straitened circum-
stances, I regarded Elizabeth Mary as a kind
of special Providence. She unwisely refused to
share her fortune with me, but for that I cared
nothing; for, although by the laws of that
country (as is well known) a wife has control
of her separate property during her life, it
passes to the husband at her death; nor can
she dispose of it otherwise by will. The mort-
ality among wives is considerable, but not
excessive.

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 43

Having married Elizabeth Mary and, as it
were, ennobled her by making her a Turmore,
I felt that the manner of her death ought, in
some sense, to match her social distinction. If
I should remove her by any of the ordinary
marital methods I should incur a just
reproach, as one destitute of a proper family
pride. Yet I could not hit upon a suitable
plan.

In this emergency I decided to consult the
Turmore archives, a priceless collection of
documents, comprising the records of the
family from the time of its founder in the
seventh century of our era. I knew that among
these sacred muniments I should find detailed
accounts of all the principal murders com-
mitted by my sainted ancestors for forty gen-
erations. From that mass of papers I could
hardly fail to derive the most valuable sug-
gestions.

The collection contained also most interest-
ing relics. There were patents of nobility
granted to my forefathers for daring and
ingenious removals of pretenders to thrones,
or occupants of them; stars, crosses and other
decorations attesting services of the most
secret and unmentionable character; miscel-
laneous gifts from the world's greatest con-

U THE COLLECTED WORKS

spirators, representing an intrinsic money
value beyond computation. There were robes,
jewels, swords of honor, and every kind of
"testimonials of esteem"; a king's skull fash-
ioned into a wine cup ; the title deeds to vast
estates, long alienated by confiscation, sale, or
abandonment; an illuminated breviary that
had belonged to Sir Aldebaran Turmore de
Peters-Turmore of accursed memory; em-
balmed ears of several of the family's most
renowned enemies; the small intestine of a cer-
tain unworthy Italian statesman inimical to
Turmores, which, twisted into a jumping
rope, had served the youth of six kindred gen-
erations— mementoes and souvenirs precious
beyond the appraisals of imagination, but by
the sacred mandates of tradition and sentiment
forever inalienable by sale or gift.

As the head of the family, I was custodian
of all these priceless heirlooms, and for their
safe keeping had constructed in the basement
of my dwelling a strong-room of massive ma-
sonry, whose solid stone walls and single iron
door could defy alike the earthquake's shock,
the tireless assaults of Time, and Cupidity's
unholy hand.

To this thesaurus of the soul, redolent of
sentiment and tenderness, and rich in sugges-

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 45

tions of crime, I now repaired for hints upon
assassination. To my unspeakable astonish-
ment and grief I found it empty! Every
shelf, every chest, every coffer had been rifled.
Of that unique and incomparable collection
not a vestige remained! Yet I proved that
until I had myself unlocked the massive metal
door, not a bolt nor bar had been disturbed;
the seals upon the lock had been intact.

I passed the night in alternate lamentation
and research, equally fruitless; the mystery
was impenetrable to conjecture, the pain
invincible to balm. But never once through-
out that dreadful night did my firm spirit
relinquish its high design against Elizabeth
Mary, and daybreak found me more resolute
than before to harvest the fruits of my
marriage. My great loss seemed but to bring
me into nearer spiritual relations with my
dead ancestors, and to lay upon me a new
and more inevitable obedience to the suasion
that spoke in every globule of my blood.

My plan of action was soon formed, and
procuring a stout cord I entered my wife's
bedroom, finding her, as I expected, in a
sound sleep. Before she was awake, I had
her bound fast, hand and foot. She was
greatly surprised and pained, but heedless of

46 THE COLLECTED WORKS

her remonstrances, delivered in a high key,
I carried her into the now rifled strong-room,
which I had never suffered her to enter, and
of whose treasures I had not apprised her.
Seating her, still bound, in an angle of the
wall, I passed the next two days and nights in
conveying bricks and mortar to the spot, and
on the morning of the third day had her
securely walled in, from floor to ceiling. All
this time I gave no further heed to her pleas
for mercy than (on her assurance of non-resist-
ance, which I am bound to say she honorably
observed) to grant her the freedom of her
limbs. The space allowed her was about four
feet by six. As I inserted the last bricks of
the top course, in contact with the ceiling of
the strong-room, she bade me farewell with
what I deemed the composure of despair, and
I rested from my work, feeling that I had
faithfully observed the traditions of an an-
cient and illustrious family. My only bitter
reflection, so far as my own conduct was con-
cerned, came of the consciousness that in the
performance of my design I had labored; but
this no living soul would ever know.

After a night's rest I went to the Judge of
the Court of Successions and Inheritances and
made a true and sworn relation of all that I

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 47

had done — except that I ascribed to a servant
the manual labor of building the wall. His
honor appointed a court commissioner, who
made a careful examination of the work, and
upon his report Elizabezth Mary Turmore
was, at the end of a week, formally pro-
nounced dead. By due process of law I was
put into possession of her estate, and although
this was not by hundreds of thousands of dol-
lars as valuable as my lost treasures, it raised
me from poverty to affluence and brought me
the respect of the great and good.

Some six months after these events strange
rumors reached me that the ghost of my
deceased wife had been seen in several places
about the country, but always at a considerable
distance from Graymaulkin. These rumors,
which I was unable to trace to any authentic
source, differed widely in many particulars,
but were alike in ascribing to the apparition a
certain high degree of apparent worldly pros-
perity combined with an audacity most
uncommon in ghosts. Not only was the spirit
attired in most costly raiment, but it walked
at noonday, and even drove! I was inexpress-
ibly annoyed by these reports, and thinking
there might be something more than supersti-
tion in the popular belief that only the spirit^

48 THE COLLECTED WORKS

of the unburied dead still walk the earth, I
took some workmen equipped with picks and
crowbars into the now long unentered strong-
room, and ordered them to demolish the brick
wall that I had built about the partner of my
joys. I was resolved to give the body of Eliza-
beth Mary such burial as I thought her im-
mortal part might be willing to accept as an
equivalent to the privilege of ranging at will
among the haunts of the living.

In a few minutes we had broken down the
wall and, thrusting a lamp through the
breach, I looked in. Nothing! Not a bone,
not a lock of hair, not a shred of clothing —
the narrow space which, upon my affidavit,
had been legally declared to hold all that w^as
mortal of the late Mrs. Turmore was absol-
utely empty! This amazing disclosure, com-
ing upon a mind already overwrought with
too much of mystery and excitement, was more
than I could bear. I shrieked aloud and fell
in a fit. For months afterward I lay between
life and death, fevered and delirious; nor did
I recover until my physician had had the
providence to take a case of valuable jewels
from my safe and leave the country.

The next summer I had occasion to visit
my wine cellar, in one corner of which I had

OF AMBROSE BIERCE

49

built the now long disused strong-room. In
moving a cask of Madeira I struck it with
considerable force against the partition wall,
and was surprised to observe that it displaced
two large square stones forming a part of the
wall.

Applying my hands to these, I easily
pushed them out entirely, and looking through
saw that they had fallen into the niche in
which I had immured my lamented wife ; fac-
ing the opening which their fall left, and at a
distance of four feet, was the brickwork which
my own hands had made for that unfortunate
gentlewoman's restraint. At this significant
revelation I began a search of the wine cellar.
Behind a row of casks I found four historic-
ally interesting but intrinsically valueless
objects :

First, the mildewed remains of a ducal robe
of state (Florentine) of the eleventh century;
second, an illuminated vellum breviary with
the name of Sir Aldebaran Turmore de
Peters-Turmore inscribed in colors on the
title page; third, a human skull fashioned into
a drinking cup and deeply stained with wine;
fourth, the iron cross of a Knight Commander
of the Imperial Austrian Order of Assassins
by Poison.

50 THE COLLECTED WORKS

That was all — not an object having com-
mercial value, no papers — nothing. But this
was enough to clear up the mystery of the
strong-room. My wife had early divined the
existence and purpose of that apartment, and
with the skill amounting to genius had effected
an entrance by loosening the two stones in the
wall.

Through that opening she had at sev-
eral times abstracted the entire collection,
which doubtless she had succeeded in convert-
ing into coin of the realm. When with an
unconscious justice which deprives me of all
satisfaction in the memory I decided to build
her into the wall, by some malign fatality I
selected that part of it in which were these
movable stones, and doubtless before I had
fairly finished my bricklaying she had
removed them and, slipping through into the
wine cellar, replaced them as they were orig-
inally laid. From the cellar she had easily
escaped unobserved, to enjoy her infamous
gains in distant parts. I have endeavored to
procure a warrant, but the Lord High Baron
of the Court of Indictment and Conviction
reminds me that she is legally dead, and says
my only course is to go before the Master in
Cadavery and move for a writ of disinterment

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 51

and constructive revival. So it looks as if I
must suffer without redress this great wrong
at the hands of a woman devoid alike of prin-
ciple and shame.

52 THE COLLECTED WORKS

THE CITY OF THE GONE AWAY

I WAS born of poor because honest par-
ents, and until I was twenty-three years
years old never knew the possibilities of
happiness latent in another person's
coin. At that time Providence threw
me into a deep sleep and revealed to me
in a dream the folly of labor. '^Behold/' said
a vision of a holy hermit, "the poverty and
squalor of your lot and listen to the teachings
of nature. You rise in the morning from your
pallet of straw and go forth to your daily
labor in the fields. The flowers nod their
heads in friendly salutation as you pass. The
lark greets you with a burst of song. The
early sun sheds his temperate beams upon you,
and from the dewy grass you inhale an atmo-
sphere cool and grateful to your lungs. All
nature seems to salute you with the joy of a
generous servant welcoming a faithful master.
You are in harmony with her gentlest mood
and your soul sings within you. You begin

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 53

your daily task at the plow, hopeful that the
noonday will fulfill the promise of the morn,
maturing the charms of the landscape and
confirming its benediction upon your spirit.
You follow the plow until fatigue invokes
repose, and seating yourself upon the earth at
the end of your furrow you expect to enjoy in
fulness the delights of which you did but
taste.

"Alas! the sun has climbed into a brazen sky
and his beams are become a torrent. The
flowers have closed their petals, confining
their perfume and denying their colors to the
eye. Coolness no longer exhales from the
grass: the dew has vanished and the dry sur-
face of the fields repeats the fierce heat of the
sky. No longer the birds of heaven salute you
with melody, but the jay harshly upbraids
you from the edge of the copse. Unhappy
man! all the gentle and healing ministrations
of nature are denied you in punishment of
your sin. You have broken the First Com-
mandment of the Natural Decalogue: you
have labored!"

Awakening from my dream, I collected my
few belongings, bade adieu to my erring par-
ents and departed out of that land, pausing at
the grave of my grandfather, who had been a

54 THE COLLECTED WORKS

priest, to take an oath that never again,
Heaven helping me, would I earn an honest
penny.

How long I traveled I know not, but I came
at last to a great city by the sea, where I set up
as a physician. The name of that place I do
not now remember, for such were my activity
and renown in my new profession that the
Aldermen, moved by pressure of public opin-
ion, altered it, and thenceforth the place was
known as the City of the Gone Away. It is
needless to say that I had no knowledge of
medicine, but by securing the service of an
eminent forger I obtained a diploma purport-
ing to have been granted by the Royal Quack-
ery of Charlatanic Empiricism at Hoodos,
which, framed in immortelles and suspended
by a bit of crepe to a willow in front of my
office, attracted the ailing in great numbers.
In connection with my dispensary I conducted
one of the largest undertaking establishments
ever known, and as soon as my means per-
mitted, purchased a wide tract of land and
made it into a cemetery. I owned also some
very profitable marble works on one side of
the gateway to the cemetery, and on the other
an extensive flower garden. My Mourner's
Emporium was patronized by the beauty,

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 55

fashion and sorrow of the city. In short, I
was in a very prosperous way of business, and
within a year was able to send for my parents
and establish my old father very comfortably
as a receiver of stolen goods — an act which I
confess was saved from the reproach of filial
gratitude only by my exaction of all the profits.
But the vicissitudes of fortune are avoid-
able only by practice of the sternest indigence:
human foresight cannot provide against the
envy of the gods and the tireless machinations
of Fate. The widening circle of prosperity
grows weaker as it spreads until the antagon-
istic forces which it has pushed back are made
powerful by compression to resist and finally
overwhelm. So great grew the renown of my
skill in medicine that patients were brought to
me from all the four quarters of the globe.
Burdensome invalids whose tardiness in dying
was a perpetual grief to their friends; wealthy
testators whose legatees were desirous to come
by their own; superfluous children of penitent
parents and dependent parents of frugal child-
ren; wives of husbands ambitious to remarry
and husbands of wives without standing in the
courts of divorce — these and all conceivable
classes of the surplus population were con-
ducted to my dispensary in the City of the

56 THE COLLECTED WQRKS

Gone Away. They came in incalculable multi-
tudes.

Government agents brought me caravans of
orphans, paupers, lunatics and all who had
become a public charge. My skill in curing
orphanism and pauperism was particularly
acknowledged by a grateful parliament.

Naturally, all this promoted the public
prosperity, for although I got the greater part
of the money that strangers expended in the
city, the rest went into the channels of trade,
and I was myself a liberal investor, purchaser
and employer, and a patron of the arts and
sciences. The City of the Gone Away grew
so rapidly that in a few years it had inclosed
my cemetery, despite its own constant growth.
In that fact lay the lion that rent me.

The Aldermen declared my cemetery a
public evil and decided to take it from me,
remove the bodies to another place and make
a park of it. I was to be paid for it and could
easily bribe the appraisers to fix a high price,
but for a reason which will appear the
decision gave me little joy. It was in vain
that I protested against the sacrilege of dis-
turbing the holy dead, although this was a
powerful appeal, for in that land the dead are
held in religious veneration. Temples are

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 57

built in their honor and a separate priesthood
maintained at the public expense, whose only
duty is performance of memorial services of
the most solemn and touching kind. On four
days in the year there is a Festival of the
Good, as it is called, when all the people lay
by their work or business and, headed by the
priests, march in procession through the
cemeteries, adorning the graves and praying
in the temples. However bad a man's life may
be, it is believed that when dead he enters into
a state of eternal and inexpressible happiness.
To signify a doubt of this is an offense punish-
able by death. To deny burial to the dead,
or to exhume a buried body, except under
sanction of law by special dispensation and
with solemn ceremony, is a crime having no
stated penalty because no one has ever had
the hardihood to commit it.

All these considerations were in my favor,
yet so well assured were the people and their
civic officers that my cemetery was injurious
to the public health that it was condemned and
appraised, and with terror in my heart I re-
ceived three times its value and began to settle
up my affairs with all speed.

A week later was the day appointed for the
formal inauguration of the ceremony of

58 THE COLLECTED WORKS

removing the bodies. The day was fine and
the entire population of the city and surround-
ing country was present at the imposing relig-
ious rites. These were directed by the mort-
uary priesthood in full canonicals. There
was propitiatory sacrifice in the Temples of
the Once, followed by a processional pageant
of great splendor, ending at the cemetery. The
Great Mayor in his robe of state led the pro-
cession. He was armed with a golden
spade and followed by one hundred male
and female singers, clad all in white and
chanting the Hymn to the Gone Away.
Behind these came the minor priesthood
of the temples, all the civic authorities,
habited in their official apparel, each carrying
a living pig as an offering to the gods of the
dead. Of the many divisions of the line, the
last was formed by the populace, with uncov-
ered heads, sifting dust into their hair in token
of humility. In front of the mortuary chapel
in the midst of the necropolis, the Supreme
Priest stood in gorgeous vestments, supported
on each hand by a line of bishops and other
high dignitaries of his prelacy, all frowning
with the utmost austerity. As the Great
Mayor paused in the Presence, the minor
clergy, the civic authorities, the choir and

1^

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 59

populace closed in and encompassed the spot.
The Great Mayor, laying his golden spade at
the feet of the Supreme Priest, knelt in silence.

"Why comest thou here, presumptuous
mortal?" said the Supreme Priest in clear, de-
liberate tones. "Is it thy unhallowed purpose
with this implement to uncover the mysteries
of death and break the repose of the Good?"

The Great Mayor, still kneeling, drew from
his robe a document with portentous seals:
"Behold, O ineffable, thy servant, having war-
rant of his people, entreateth at thy holy
hands the custody of the Good, to the end and
purpose that they lie in fitter earth, by conse-
cration duly prepared against their coming."

With that he placed in the sacerdotal hands
the order of the Council of Aldermen decree-
ing the removal. Merely touching the parch-
ment, the Supreme Priest passed it to the
Head Necropolitan at his side, and raising his
hands relaxed the severity of his countenance
and exclaimed: "The gods comply."

Down the line of prelates on either side, his
gesture, look and words were successively
repeated. The Great Mayor rose to his feet,
the choir began a solemn chant and, oppor-
tunely, a funeral car drawn by ten white
horses with black plumes rolled in at the gate

60 THE COLLECTED WORKS

and made its way through the parting crowd
to the grave selected for the occasion — that of
a high ofEcial whom I had treated for chronic
incumbency. The Great Mayor touched the
grave with his golden spade (which he then
presented to the Supreme Priest) and two
stalwart diggers with iron ones set vigorously
to work.

At that moment I was observed to leave the
cemetery and the country; for a report of the
rest of the proceedings I am indebted to my
sainted father, who related it in a letter to me,
written in jail the night before he had the irre-
parable misfortune to take the kink out of a
rope.

As the workmen proceeded with their ex-
cavation, four bishops stationed themselves at
the corners of the grave and in the profound
silence of the multitude, broken otherwise
only by the harsh grinding sound of spades,
repeated continuously, one after another, the
solemn invocations and responses from the
Ritual of the Disturbed, imploring the blessed
brother to forgive. But the blessed brother
was not there. Full fathom two thev mined for
him in vain, then gave it up. The priests were
visibly disconcerted, the populace was aghast,
for that grave was indubitably vacant.

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 61

After a brief consultation with the Supreme
Priest, the Great Mayor ordered the workmen
to open another grave. The ritual was omitted
this time until the cofBn should be uncovered.
There was no coffin, no body.

The cemetery was now a scene of the wild-
est confusion and dismay. The people shouted
and ran hither and thither, gesticulating,
clamoring, all talking at once, none listening.
Some ran for spades, fire-shovels, hoes, sticks,
anything. Some brought carpenters' adzes,
even chisels from the marble works, and with
these inadequate aids set to work upon the
first graves they came to. Others fell upon the
mounds with their bare hands, scraping away
the earth as eagerly as dogs digging for mar-
mots. Before nightfall the surface of the
greater part of the cemetery had been
upturned; every grave had been explored to
the bottom and thousands of men were tearing
away at the interspaces with as furious a
frenzy as exhaustion would permit. As night
came on torches were lighted, and in the sinis-
ter glare these frantic mortals, looking like a
legion of fiends performing some unholy rite,
pursued their disappointing work until they
had devastated the entire area. But not a
body did they find — not even a coffin.

62 THE COLLECTED WORKS

The explanation is exceedingly simple. An
important part of my income had been derived
from the sale of cadavres to medical colleges,
which never before had been so well supplied,
and which, in added recognition of my serv-
ices to science, had all bestowed upon me
diplomas, degrees and fellowships without
number. But their demand for cadavres was
unequal to my supply: by even the most prod-
igal extravagances they could not consume
the one-half of the products of my skill as a
physician. As to the rest, I had owned and
operated the most extensive and thoroughly
appointed soapworks in all the country. The
excellence of my "Toilet Homoline" was
attested by certificates from scores of the
saintliest theologians, and I had one in auto-
graph from Badelina Fatti the most famous
living soaprano.

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 63

THE MAJOR'S TALE

IN the days of the Civil War practical
joking had not, I think, fallen into that
disrepute which characterizes it now.
That, doubtless, was owing to our
extreme youth — men were much younger
than now, and evermore your very young
man has a boisterous spirit, running easily
to horse-play. You cannot think how
young the men were in the early sixties ! Why,
the average age of the entire Federal Army
was not more than twenty- five; I doubt if it
was more than twenty-three, but not having
the statistics on that point (if there are any) I
want to be moderate : we will say twenty- five.
It is true a man of twenty-five was in that
heroic time a good deal more of a man than
one of that age is now; you could see that by
looking at him. His face had nothing of that
unripeness so conspicuous in his successor. I
never see a young fellow now without observ-
ing how disagreebly young he really is; but
during the war we did not think of a man's

64 THE COLLECTED WORKS

age at all unless he happened to be pretty well
along in life. In that case one could not help
it, for the unloveliness of age assailed the
human countenance then much earlier than
now; the result, I suppose, of hard service —
perhaps, to some extent, of hard drink, for,
bless my soul! we did shed the blood of the
grape and the grain abundantly during the
war. I remember thinking General Grant,
who could not have been more than forty, a
pretty well preserved old chap, considering
his habits. As to men of middle age — say
from fifty to sixty — ^why, they all looked fit
to personate the Last of the Hittites, or the
Madagascarene Methuselah, in a museum.
Depend upon it, my friends, men of that time
were greatly younger than men are to-day, but
looked much older. The change is quite
remarkable.

I said that practical joking had not then
gone out of fashion. It had not, at least, in
the army; though possibly in the more serious
life of the civilian it had no place except in
the form of tarring and feathering an occa-
sional "copperhead." You all know, I sup-
pose, what a "copperhead" was, so I will go
directly at my story without introductory
remark, as is my way.

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 65

It was a few days before the battle of Nash-
ville. The enemy had driven us up out of
northern Georgia and Alabama. At Nash-
ville we had turned at bay and fortified, while
old Pap Thomas, our commander, hurried
down reinforcements and supplies from Louis-
ville. Meantime Hood, the Confederate com-
mander, had partly invested us and lay close
enough to have tossed shells into the heart of
the town. As a rule he abstained — he was
afraid of killing the families of his own
soldiers, I suppose, a great many of whom had
lived there. I sometimes wondered what
were the feelings of those fellows, gazing over
our heads at their own dwellings, where their
wives and children or their aged parents were
perhaps suffering for the necessaries of life,
and certainly (so their reasoning would run)
cowering under the tyranny and power of the
barbarous Yankees.

To begin, then, at the beginning, I was serv-
ing at that time on the staff of a division com-
mander whose name I shall not disclose, for I
am relating facts, and the person upon whom
they bear hardest may have surviving relatives
who would not care to have him traced. Our
headquarters were in a large dwelling which
stood just behind our line of works. This had

66 THE COLLECTED WORKS

been hastily abandoned by the civilian occup-
ants, who had left everything pretty much as
it was — had no place to store it, probably, and
trusted that Heaven would preserve it from
Federal cupidity and Confederate artillery.
With regard to the latter we were as solicitous
as they.

Rummaging about in some of the chambers
and closets one evening, some of us found an
abundant supply of lady-gear — gowns, shawls,
bonnets, hats, petticoats and the Lord knows
what; I could not at that time have named the
half of it. The sight of all this pretty plunder
inspired one of us with what he was pleased
to call an "idea," which, when submitted to
the other scamps and scapegraces of the staff,
met with instant and enthusiastic approval.
We proceeded at once to act upon it for the
undoing of one of our comrades.

Our selected victim was an aide. Lieutenant
Haberton, so to call him. He was a good
soldier — as gallant a chap as ever wore spurs ;
but he had an intolerable weakness: he was
a lady-killer, and like most of his class, even
in those days, eager that all should know it.
He never tired of relating his amatory
exploits, and I need not say how dismal that
kind of narrative is to all but the narrator.

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 67

It would be dismal even if sprightly and viva-
cious, for all men are rivals in woman's favor,
and to relate your successes to another man is
to rouse in him a dumb resentment, tempered
by disbelief. You will not convince him that
you tell the tale for his entertainment; he will
hear nothing in it but an expression of your
own vanity. Moreover, as most men, whether
rakes or not, are willing to be thought rakes,
he is very likely to resent a stupid and unjust
inference which he suspects you to have drawn
from his reticence in the matter of his own
adventures — namely, that he has had none. If,
on the other hand, he has had no scruple in the
matter and his reticence is due to lack of
opportunity to talk, or of nimbleness in taking
advantage of it, why, then he will be surly
because you "have the floor" when he wants
it himself. There are, in short, no circum-
stances under which a man, even from the
best of motives, or no motive at all, can relate
his feats of love without distinctly lowering
himself in the esteem of his male auditor; and
herein lies a just punishment for such as kiss
and tell. In my younger days I was myself
not entirely out of favor with the ladies, and
have a memory stored with much concerning
them which doubtless I might put into accept-

68 THE COLLECTED WORKS

able narrative had I not undertaken another
tale, and if it were not my practice to relate
one thing at a time, going straight away to
the end, without digression.

Lieutenant Haberton was, it must be con-
fessed, a singularly handsome man with
engaging manners. He was, I suppose, judg-
ing from the imperfect view-point of my sex,
what women call ^^iascinating." Now, the
qualities which make a man attractive to
ladies entail a double disadvantage. First,
they are of a sort readily discerned by other
men, and by none more readily than by those
who lack them. Their possessor, being feared
by all these, is habitually slandered by them in
self-defense. To all the ladies in whose wel-
fare they deem themselves entitled to a voice
and interest they hint at the vices and general
unworth of the 'ladies' man" in no uncertain
terms, and to their wives relate without shame
the most monstrous falsehoods about him.
Nor are they restrained by the consideration
that he is their friend; the qualities which
have engaged their own admiration make it
necessary to warn away those to whom the
allurement would be a peril. So the man of
charming personality, while loved by all the
ladies who know him well, yet not too well,

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 69

must endure with such fortitude as he may the
consciousness that those others who know him
only "by reputation" consider him a shameless
reprobate, a vicious and unworthy man — a
type and example of moral depravity. To
name the second disadvantage entailed by his
charms : he commonly is.

In order to get forward with our busy story
(and in my judgment a story once begun
should not suffer impedition) it is necessary
to explain that a young fellow attached to our
headquarters as an orderly was notably effem-
inate in face and figure. He was not more than
seventeen and had a perfectly smooth face and
large lustrous eyes, which must have been the
envy of many a beautiful woman in those days.
And how beautiful the women of those days
were! and how gracious! Those of the South
showed in their demeanor toward us Yankees
something of hauteur, but, for my part, I
found it less insupportable than the studious
indifference with which one's attentions are
received by the ladies of this new generation,
whom I certainly think destitute of sentiment
and sensibility.

This young orderly, whose name was
Arman, we persuaded — by what arguments I
am not bound to say — to clothe himself in

70 THE COLLECTED WORKS

female attire and personate a lady. When we
had him arrayed to our satisfaction — and a
charming girl he looked — he was conducted
to a sofa in the office of the adjutant-general.
That officer was in the secret, as indeed were
all excepting Haberton and the general;
within the awful dignity hedging the latter
lay possibilities of disapproval which we were
unwilling to confront.

When all was ready I went to Haberton and
said : ^'Lieutenant, there is a young woman in
the adjutant-general's office. She is the
daughter of the insurgent gentleman who
owns this house, and has, I think, called to see
about its present occupancy. We none of us
know just how to talk to her, but we think
perhaps you would say about the right thing —
at least you will say things in the right way.
Would you mind coming down?"

The lieutenant would not mind; he made a
hasty toilet and joined me. As we were going
along a passage toward the Presence we
encountered a formidable obstacle — the gen-
eral.

'T say, Broadwood," he said, addressing me
in the familiar manner which meant that he
was in excellent humor, "there's a lady in
Lawson's office. Looks like a devilish fine

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 71

girl — came on some errand of mercy or just-
ice, no doubt. Have the goodness to conduct
her to my quarters. I won't saddle you young-
sters with all the business of this division," he
added facetiously.

This was awkward; something had to be
done.

"General," I said, "I did not think the
lady's business of sufficient importance to
bother you with it. She is one of the Sanitary
Commission's nurses, and merely wants to see
about some supplies for the smallpox hospital
where she is on duty. I'll send her in at
once."

"You need not mind," said the general,
moving on; "I dare say Lawson will attend to
the matter."

Ah, the gallant general! how little I
thought, as I looked after his retreating figure
and laughed at the success of my ruse, that
within the week he would be "dead on the
field of honor!" Nor was he the only one of
our little military household above whom
gloomed the shadow of the death angel, and
who might almost have heard "the beating of
his wings." On that bleak December morn-
ing a few days later, when from an hour before
dawn until ten o'clock we sat on horseback on

72 THE COLLECTED WORKS

those icy hills, waiting for General Smith to
open the battle miles away to the right, there
were eight of us. At the close of the fighting
there were three. There is now one. Bear
with him yet a little while, oh, thrifty genera-
tion; he is but one of the horrors of war
strayed from his era into yours. He is only the
harmless skeleton at your feast and peace-
dance, responding to your laughter and your
footing it featly, with rattling fingers and
bobbing skull — albeit upon suitable occasion,
with a partner of his choosing, he might do
his little dance with the best of you.

As we entered the adjutant-general's office
we observed that the entire staff was there.
The adjutant-general himself was exceedingly
busy at his desk. The commissary of subsist-
ence played cards with the surgeon in a bay
window. The rest were in several parts of
the room, reading or conversing in low tones.
On a sofa in a half lighted nook of the room,
at some distance from any of the groups, sat
the ''lady," closely veiled, her eyes modestly
fixed upon her toes.

"Madam," I said, advancing with Haber-
ton, "this officer will be pleased to serve you
if it is in his power. I trust that it is."

With a bow I retired to the farther corner

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 73

of the room and took part in a conversation
going on there, though I had not the faintest
notion what it was about, and my remarks had
no relevancy to anything under the heavens.
A close observer would have noticed that we
were all intently watching Haberton and only
^^making believe" to do anything else.

He was worth watching, too; the fellow
was simply an edition de luxe of "Turvey-
drop on Deportment." As the "lady" slowly
unfolded her tale of grievances against our
lawless soldiery and mentioned certain in-
stances of wanton disregard of property rights
— among them, as to the imminent peril of
bursting our sides we partly overheard, the
looting of her own wardrobe — the look of
sympathetic agony in Haberton's handsome
face was the very flower and fruit of histrionic
art. His deferential and assenting nods at
her several statements were so exquisitely per-
formed that one could not help regretting
their unsubstantial nature and the impossi-
bility of preserving them under glass for
instruction and delight of posterity. And all
the time the wretch was drawing his chair
nearer and nearer. Once or twice he looked
about to see if we were observing, but we were
in appearance blankly oblivious to all but one

74 THE COLLECTED WORKS

another and our several diversions. The low
hum of our conversation, the gentle tap-tap of
the cards as they fell in play and the furious
scratching of the adjutant-generaPs pen as he
turned off countless pages of words without
sense were the only sounds heard. No — there
was another : at long intervals the distant boom
of a heavy gun, followed by the approaching
rush of the shot. The enemy was amusing
himself.

On these occasions the lady was perhaps not
the only member of that company who was
startled, but she was startled more than the
others, sometimes rising from the sofa and
standing with clasped hands, the authentic
portrait of terror and irresolution. It was
no more than natural that Haberton should at
these times reseat her with infinite tenderness,
assuring her of her safety and regretting her
peril in the same breath. It was perhaps right
that he should finally possess himself of her
gloved hand and a seat beside her on the sofa;
but it certainly was highly improper for him
to be in the very act of possessing himself of
both hands when — boom, whiz, BANG!

We all sprang to our feet. A shell had
crashed into the house and exploded in the
room above us. Bushels of plaster fell among

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 75

us. That modest and murmurous young lady
sprang erect.

"Jumping Jee-rusalem!'* she cried.

Haberton, who had also risen, stood as one
petrified — as a statue of himself erected on
the site of his assassination. He neither spoke,
nor moved, nor once took his eyes off the face
of Orderly Arman, who was now flinging his
girl-gear right and left, exposing his charms
in the most shameless way; while out upon the
night and away over the lighted camps into
the black spaces between the hostile lines
rolled the billows of our inexhaustible laugh-
ter! Ah, what a merry life it was in the old
heroic days when men had not forgotten how
to laugh!

Haberton slowly came to himself. He
looked about the room less blankly; then by
degrees fashioned his visage into the sickliest
grin that ever libeled all smiling. He shook
his head and looked knowing.

"You can't fool meT he said.

76 THE COLLECTED WORKS

CURRIED COW

MY Aunt Patience, who tilled a
small farm in the state of Michi-
gan, had a favorite cow. This
creature was not a good cow, nor
a profitable one, for instead of devoting a
part of her leisure to secretion of milk and
production of veal she concentrated all her
faculties on the study of .kicking. She would
kick all day and get up in the middle of the
night to kick. She would kick at anything —
hens, pigs, posts, loose stones, birds in the air
and fish leaping out of the water; to this im-
partial and catholic-minded beef, all were
equal — all similarly undeserving. Like old
Timotheus, who "raised a mortal to the
skies," was my Aunt Patience's cow; though,
in the words of a later poet than Dryden, she
did it "more harder and more frequently."
It was pleasing to see her open a passage for
herself through a populous barnyard. She
would flash out, right and left, first with one
hind-leg and then with the other, and would
sometimes, under favoring conditions, have a

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 77

considerable number of domestic animals in
the air at once.

Her kicks, too, were as admirable in quality
as inexhaustible in quantity. They were
incomparably superior to those of the untut-
ored kine that had not made the art a life
study — mere amateurs that kicked "by ear,"
as they say in music. I saw her once standing
in the road, professedly fast asleep, and
mechanically munching her cud with a sort
of Sunday morning lassitude, as one munches
one's cud in a dream. Snouting about at her
side, blissfully unconscious of impending dan-
ger and wrapped up in thoughts of his sweet-
heart, was a gigantic black hog — a hog of
about the size and general appearance of a
yearling rhinoceros. Suddenly, while I looked
— without a visible movement on the part of
the cow — with never a perceptible tremor of
her frame, nor a lapse in the placid regularity
of her chewing — that hog had gone away from
there — had utterly taken his leave. But away
toward the pale horizon a minute black speck
was traversing the empyrean with the speed
of a meteor, and in a moment had disap-
peared, without audible report, beyond the
distant hills. It may have been that hog.

Currying cows is not, I think, a common

78 THE COLLECTED WORKS

practice, even in Michigan; but as this one
had never needed milking, of course she had
to be subjected to some equivalent form of per-
secution; and irritating her skin with a curry-
comb was thought as disagreeable an attention
as a thoughtful affection could devise. At
least she thought it so; though I suspect her
mistress really meant it for the good creature's
temporal advantage. Anyhow my aunt always
made it a condition to the employment of a
farm-servant that he should curry the cow
every morning; but after just enough trials to
convince himself that it was not a sudden
spasm, nor a mere local disturbance, the man
would always give notice of an intention to
quit, by pounding the beast half-dead with
some foreign body and then limping home to
his couch. I don't know how many men the
creature removed from my aunt's employ in
this way, but judging from the number of
lame persons in that part of the country, I
should say a good many; though some of the
lameness may have been taken at second-hand
from the original sufferers by their descend-
ants, and some may have come by contagion.

I think my aunt's was a faulty system of
agriculture. It is true her farm labor cost
her nothing, for the laborers all left her serv-

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 79

ice before any salary had accrued; but as the
cow's fame spread abroad through the several
States and Territories, it became increasingly
difficult to obtain hands; and, after all, the
favorite was imperfectly curried. It was
currently remarked that the cow had kicked
the farm to pieces — a rude metaphor, imply-
ing that the land was not properly cultivated,
nor the buildings and fences kept in adequate
repair.

It was useless to remonstrate with my
aunt: she would concede everything, amend-
ing nothing. Her late husband had attempted
to reform the abuse in this manner, and had
had the argument all his own way until he
had remonstrated himself into an early grave ;
and the funeral was delayed all day, until a
fresh undertaker could be procured, the one
originally engaged having confidingly under-
taken to curry the cow at the request of the
widow.

Since that time my Aunt Patience had not
been in the matrimonial market; the love of
that cow had usurped in her heart the place of
a more natural and profitable affection. But
when she saw her seeds unsown, her harvests
ungarnered, her fences overtopped with rank
brambles and her meadows gorgeous with the

80 THE COLLECTED WORKS

towering Canada thistle she thought it best to
take a partner.

When it transpired that my Aunt Patience
intended wedlock there was intense popular
excitement. Every adult single male became
at once a marrying man. The criminal statist-
ics of Badger county show that in that single
year more marriages occurred than in any
decade before or since. But none of them
was my aunt's. Men married their cooks,
their laundresses, their deceased wives'
mothers, their enemies' sisters — married
whomsoever would wed; and any man who,
by fair means or courtship, could not obtain a
wife went before a justice of the peace and
made an affidavit that he had some wives in
Indiana. Such was the fear of being married
alive by my Aunt Patience.

Now, where my aunt's affection was
concerned she was, as the reader will
have already surmised, a rather determined
woman ; and the extraordinary marrying epi-
demic having left but one eligible male in all
that county, she had set her heart upon that one
eligible male ; then she went and carted him to
her home. He turned out to be a long Method-
ist parson, named Huggins.

Aside from bi§ unconscionable length, the

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 81

Rev. Berosus Huggins was not so bad a fel-
low, and was nobody's fool. He was, I sup-
pose, the most ill-favored mortal, however,
in the whole northern half of America — thin,
angular, cadaverous of visage and solemn
out of all reason. He commonly wore a low-
crowned black hat, set so far down upon his
head as partly to eclipse his eyes and
wholly obscure the ample glory of his ears.
The only other visible article of his attire
(except a brace of wrinkled cowskin boots,
by which the word "polish" would have
been considered the meaningless fragment of
a lost language) was a tight- fitting black
frock-coat, preternaturally long in the waist,
the skirts of which fell about his heels, sopping
up the dew. This he always wore snugly
buttoned from the throat downward. In this
attire he cut a tolerably spectral figure. His
aspect was so conspicuously unnatural and
inhuman that whenever he went into a corn-
field, the predatory crows would temporarily
forsake their business to settle upon him in
swarms, fighting for the best seats upon his
person, by way of testifying their contempt
for the weak inventions of the husbandman.
The day after the wedding my Aunt
Patience summoned the Rev. Berosus to the

82 THE COLLECTED WORKS

council chamber, and uttered her mind to the
following intent:

"Now, Huggy, dear, I'll tell you what
there is to do about the place. First, you must
repair all the fences, clearing out the weeds
and repressing the brambles with a strong
hand. Then you will have to exterminate
the Canadian thistles, mend the wagon, rig up
a plow or two, and get things into ship-shape
generally. This will keep you out of mis-
chief for the better part of two years; of
course you will have to give up preaching,
for the present. As soon as you have — OI
I forgot poor Phoebe. She"

"Mrs. Huggins," interrupted her solemn
spouse, "I shall hope to be the means, under
Providence, of effecting all needful reforms
in the husbandry of this farm. But the sister
you mention (I trust she is not of the world's
people) — have I the pleasure of knowing
her? The name, indeed, sounds familiar,
but"

"Not know Phcebe!" cried my aunt, with
unfeigned astonishment; "I thought every-
body in Badger knew Phoebe. Why, you will
have to scratch her legs, every blessed morn-
ing of your natural life!"

"I assure you, madam," rejoined the Rev.

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 83

Berosus, with dignity, "it would yield me a
hallowed pleasure to minister to the spiritual
needs of sister Phoebe, to the extent of my
feeble and unworthy ability; but, really, I
fear the merely secular ministration of which
you speak must be entrusted to abler and, I
would respectfully suggest, female hands."

"Whyyy, youuu ooold, foooool!" replied
my aunt, spreading her eyes with unbounded
amazement, "Phcebe is a cowT

"In that case," said the husband, with un-
ruffled composure, "it will, of course, devolve
upon me to see that her carnal welfare is
properly attended to; and I shall be happy to
bestow upon her legs such time as I may, with-
out sin, snatch from my strife with Satan and
the Canadian thistles."

With that the Rev. Mr. Huggins crowded
his hat upon his shoulders, pronounced a
brief benediction upon his bride, and betook
himself to the barn-yard.

Now, it is necessary to explain that he had
known from the first who Phcebe was, and
was familiar, from hearsay, with all her sinful
traits. Moreover, he had already done him-
self the honor of making her a visit, remain-
ing in the vicinity of her person, just out of
range, for more than an hour and permitting

84 THE COLLECTED WORKS

her to survey him at her leisure from every
point of the compass. In short, he and Phoebe
had mutually reconnoitered and prepared for
action.

Amongst the articles of comfort and luxury
which went to make up the good parson's dot,
and which his wife had already caused to be
conveyed to his new home, was a patent cast-
iron pump, about seven feet high. This had
been deposited near the barn-yard, prepara-
tory to being set up on the planks above the
barn-yard well. Mr. Huggins now sought
out this invention and conveying it to its
destination put it into position, screwing it
firmly to the planks. He next divested him-
self of his long gaberdine and his hat, button-
ing the former loosely about the pump, which
it almost concealed, and hanging the latter
upon the summit of the structure. The handle
of the pump, when depressed, curved out-
wardly between the coat-skirts, singularly like
a tail, but with this inconspicuous exception,
any unprejudiced observer would have pro-
nounced the thing Mr. Huggins, looking
uncommonly well.

The preliminaries completed, the good
man carefully closed the gate of the barnyard,
knowing that as soon as Phcebe, who was

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 85

campaigning in the kitchen garden, should
note the precaution she would come and jump
in to frustrate it, which eventually she did.
Her master, meanwhile, had laid himself,
coatless and hatless, along the outside of the
close board fence, where he put in the time
pleasantly, catching his death of cold and
peering through a knot-hole.

At first, and for some time, the animal pre-
tended not to see the figure on the platform.
Indeed she had turned her back upon it di-
rectly she arrived, affecting a light sleep.
Finding that this stratagem did not achieve
the success that she had expected, she aban-
doned it and stood for several minutes irreso-
lute, munching her cud in a half-hearted way,
but obviously thinking very hard. Then she
began nosing along the ground as if wholly
absorbed in a search for something that she
had lost, tacking about hither and thither,
but all the time drawing nearer to the object
of her wicked intention. Arrived within speak-
ing distance, she stood for a little while con-
fronting the fraudful figure, then put out her
nose toward it, as if to be caressed, trying to
create the impression that fondling and dal-
liance were more to her than wealth, power
and the plaudits of the populace — that she

86 THE COLLECTED WORKS

had been accustomed to them all her sweet
young life and could not get on without them.
Then she approached a little nearer, as if to
shake hands, all the while maintaining the
most amiable expression of countenance and
executing all manner of seductive nods and
winks and smiles. Suddenly she wheeled
about and with the rapidity of lightning
dealt out a terrible kick — a kick of incon-
ceivable force and fury, comparable to no-
thing in nature but a stroke of paralysis out
of a clear sky!

The effect was magical I Cows kick, not
backward but sidewise. The impact which
was intended to project the counterfeit theolo-
gian into the middle of the succeeding
conference week reacted upon the animal her-
self, and it and the pain together set her
spinning like a top. Such was the velocity of
her revolution that she looked like a dim, cir-
cular cow, surrounded by a continuous ring
like that of the planet Saturn — the white tuft
at the extremity of her sweeping tail! Pres-
ently, as the sustaining centrifugal force less-
ened and failed, she began to sway and wab-
ble from side to side, and finally, toppling
over on her side, rolled convulsively on her
back and lay motionless with all her feet in

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 87

the air, honestly believing that the world had
somehow got atop of her and she was sup-
porting it at a great sacrifice of personal com-
fort. Then she fainted.

How long she lay unconscious she knew
not, but at last she unclosed her eyes, and
catching sight of the open door of her stall,
"more sweet than all the landscape smiling
near," she struggled up, stood wavering upon
three legs, rubbed her eyes, and was visibly
bewildered as to the points of the compass.
Observing the iron clergyman standing fast
by its faith, she threw it a look of grieved
reproach and hobbled heart-broken into her
humble habitation, a subjugated cow.

For several weeks Phoebe's right hind leg
was swollen to a monstrous growth, but by a
season of judicious nursing she was "brought
round all right," as her sympathetic and puz-
zled mistress phrased it, or "made whole,"
as the reticent man of God preferred to say.
She was now as tractable and inoffensive "in
her daily walk and conversation" (Huggins)
as a little child. Her new master used to take
her ailing leg trustfully into his lap, and for
that matter, might have taken in into his
mouth if he had so desired. Her entire
character appeared to be radically changed —

88 THE COLLECTED WORKS

so altered that one day my Aunt Patience, who,
fondly as she loved her, had never before so
much as ventured to touch the hem of her
garment, as it were, went confidently up to her
to soothe her with a pan of turnips. Gad!
how thinly she spread out that good old lady
upon the face of an adjacent stone wall!
You could not have done it so evenly with a
trowel.

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 89

A REVOLT OF THE GODS

MY father was a deodorizer of dead
dogs, my mother kept the only
shop for the sale of cats'-meat
in my native city. They did not
live happily; the difference in social rank
was a chasm which could not be bridged by
the vows of marriage. It was indeed an ill-
assorted and most unlucky alliance; and as
might have been foreseen it ended in disaster.
One morning after the customary squabbles
at breakfast, my father rose from the table,
quivering and pale with wrath, and proceed-
ing to the parsonage thrashed the clergyman
who had performed the marriage ceremony.
The act was generally condemned and public
feeling ran so high against the offender that
people would permit dead dogs to He on their
property until the fragrance was deafening
rather than employ him; and the municipal
authorities suffered one bloated old mastiff
to utter itself from a public square in so clam-
orous an exhalation that passing strangers
supposed themselves to be in the vicinity of a

90 THE COLLECTED WORKS

saw-mill. My father was indeed unpopular.
During these dark days the family's sole
dependence was on my mother's emporium
for cats'-meat.

The business was profitable. In that city,
which was the oldest in the world, the cat
was an object of veneration. Its worship was
the religion of the country. The multiplica-
tion and addition of cats were a perpetual
instruction in arithmetic. Naturally, any
inattention to the wants of a cat was punished
with great severity in this world and the next;
so my good mother numbered her patrons by
the hundred. Still, with an unproductive
husband and seventeen children she had some
difficulty in making both ends cats'-meat; and
at last the necessity of increasing the discrep-
ancy between the cost price and the selling
price of her carnal wares drove her to an
expedient which proved eminently disastrous:
she conceived the unlucky notion of retaliat-
ing by refusing to sell cats'-meat until the boy-
cott was taken off her husband.

On the day when she put this resolution
into practice the shop was thronged with ex-
cited customers, and others extended in turbul-
ent and restless masses up four streets, out of
sight. Inside there was nothing but cursing,

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 91

crowding, shouting and menace. Intimida-
tion was freely resorted to — several of my
younger brothers and sisters being threatened
with cutting up for the cats — but my mother
was as firm as a rock, and the day was a black
one for Sardasa, the ancient and sacred city
that was the scene of these events. The
lock-out was vigorously maintained, and seven
hundred and fifty thousand cats went to bed
hungry!

The next morning the city was found to
have been placarded during the night with a
proclamation of the Federated Union of Old
Maids. This ancient and powerful order
averred through its Supreme Executive Head
that the boycotting of my father and the
retaliatory lock-out of my mother were seri-
ously imperiling the interests of religion. The
proclamation went on to state that if arbitra-
tion were not adopted by noon that day all the
old maids of the federation would strike — and
strike they did.

The next act of this unhappy drama was an
insurrection of cats. These sacred animals,
seeing themselves doomed to starvation, held
a mass-meeting and marched in procession
through the streets, swearing and spitting like
fiends. This revolt of the gods produced such

92 THE COLLECTED WORKS

consternation that many pious persons died
of fright and all business was suspended to
bury them and pass terrifying resolutions.

Matters were now about as bad as it seemed
possible for them to be. Meetings among
representatives of the hostile interests were
held, but no understanding was arrived at that
would hold. Every agreement was broken as
soon as made, and each element of the discord
was frantically appealing to the people. A
new horror was in store.

It will be remembered that my father was a
deodorizer of dead dogs, but was unable to
practice his useful and humble profession be-
cause no one would employ him. The dead
dogs in consequence reeked rascally. Then
they struck ! From every vacant lot and pub-
lic dumping ground, from every hedge and
ditch and gutter and cistern, every crystal rill
and the clabbered waters of all the canals and
estuaries — from all the places, in short, which
from time immemorial have been preempted
by dead dogs and consecrated to the uses of
them and their heirs and successors forever —
they trooped innumerous, a ghastly crew I
Their procession was a mile in length. Mid-
way of the town it met the procession of cats
in full song. The cats instantly exalted their

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 93

backs and magnified their tails; the dead
dogs uncovered their teeth as in life, and
erected such of their bristles as still adhered
to the skin.

The carnage that ensued was too awful for
relation! The light of the sun was obscured
by flying fur, and the battle was waged in the
darkness, blindly and regardless. The
swearing of the cats was audible miles away,
while the fragrance of the dead dogs deso-
lated seven provinces.

How the battle might have resulted it is
impossible to say, but when it was at its fierc-
est the Federated Union of Old Maids came
running down a side street and sprang into
the thickest of the fray. A moment later my
mother herself bore down upon the warring
hosts, brandishing a cleaver, and laid about
her with great freedom and impartiality. My
father joined the fight, the municipal authori-
ties engaged, and the general public, converg-
ing on the battle-field from all points of the
compass, consumed itself in the center as it
pressed in from the circumference. Last of
all, the dead held a meeting in the cemetery
and resolving on a general strike, began to
destroy vaults, tombs, monuments, head-
Stones, willQW3^ angels and young sheep in

94 THE COLLECTED WORKS

marble — everything they could lay their
hands on. By nightfall the living and the
dead were alike exterminated, and v^here the
ancient and sacred city of Sardasa had stood
nothing remained but an excavation filled
with dead bodies and building materials,
shreds of cat and blue patches of decayed dog.
The place is now a vast pool of stagnant water
in the center of a desert.

The stirring events of those few days con-
stituted my industrial education, and so well
have I improved my advantages that I am
now Chief of Misrule to the Dukes of Dis-
order, an organization numbering thirteen
million American workingmen.

i

OF AMBROSE BIERCE

95

THE BAPTISM OF DOBSHO

IT was a wicked thing to do, certainly. I
have often regretted it since, and if the
opportunity of doing so again were pre-
sented I should hesitate a long time be-
fore embracing it. But I was young then, and
cherished a species of humor which I have
since abjured. Still, when I remember the
character of the people who were burlesquing
and bringing into disrepute the letter and
spirit of our holy religion I feel a certain
satisfaction in having contributed one feeble
effort toward making them ridiculous. In
consideration of the little good I may have
done in that way, I beg the reader to judge
my conceded error as leniently as possible.
This is the story.

Some years ago the town of Harding, in
Illinois, experienced "a revival of religion,"
as the people called it. It would have been
more accurate and less profane to term it a
revival of Rampageanism, for the craze orig-
inated in, and was disseminated by, the sect
which I will call the Rampagean communion;

96 THE COLLECTED WORKS

and most of the leaping and howling was done
in that interest. Amongst those who yielded
to the influence was my friend Thomas Dob-
sho. Tom had been a pretty bad sinner in a
small way, but he went into this new thing
heart and soul. At one of the meetings he
made a public confession of more sins than
he ever was, or ever could have been guilty
of ; stopping just short of statutory crimes, and
even hinting, significantly, that he could tell
a good deal more if he were pressed. He
wanted to join the absurd communion the very
evening of his conversion. He wanted to join
two or three communions. In fact, he was so
carried away with his zeal that some of the
brethren gave me a hint to take him home; he
and I occupied adjoining apartments in the
Elephant Hotel.

Tom's fervor, as it happened, came near
defeating its own purpose; instead of taking
him at once into the fold without reference or
"character," which was their usual way, the
brethren remembered against him his awful
confessions and put him on probation. But
after a few weeks, during which he conducted
himself like a decent lunatic, it was decided
to baptise him along with a dozen other pretty
hard cases who had been converted more

OF AMBROSE BIERCE

97

recently. This sacrilegious ceremony I per-
suaded myself it was my duty to prevent,
though I think now I erred as to the means
adopted. It was to take place on a Sunday,
and on the preceding Saturday I called on the
head revivalist, the Rev. Mr. Swin, and craved
an interview.

"I come," said I, with simulated reluct-
ance and embarrassment, "in behalf of my
friend, Brother Dobsho, to make a very delic-
ate and unusual request. You are, I think,
going to baptise him to-morrow, and I trust
it will be to him the beginning of a new and
better life. But I don't know if you are aware
that his family are all Plungers, and that he
is himself tainted with the wicked heresy of
that sect. So it is. He is, as one might say in
secular metaphor, ^on the fence' between their
grievous error and the pure faith of your
church. It would be most melancholy if he
should get down on the wrong side. Although
I confess with shame I have not myself em-
braced the truth, I hope I am not too blind
to see where it lies."

"The calamity that you apprehend," said
the reverend lout, after solemn reflection,
"would indeed seriously affect our friend's in-
terest and endanger his soul. I had not ex-

98 THE COLLECTED WORKS

pected Brother Dobsho so soon to give up the
good fight."

"I think sir," I replied reflectively, "there
is no fear of that if the matter is skilfully
managed. He is heartily with you — might I
venture to say with us? — on every point but
one. He favors immersion! He has been
so vile a sinner that he foolishly fears the more
simple rite of your church will not make him |
wet enough. Would you believe it? his unin-
structed scruples on the point are so gross and
materialistic that he actually suggested soap-
ing himself as a preparatory ceremony! I
believe, however, if instead of sprinkling my
friend, you would pour a generous basinful
of water on his head — but now that I think
of it in your enlightening presence I see that
such a proceeding is quite out of the question.
I fear we must let matters take the usual
course, trusting to our later efforts to prevent
the backsliding which may result."

The parson rose and paced the floor a
moment, then suggested that he 'd better see
Brother Dobsho, and labor to remove his
error. I told him I thought not; I was sure
it would not be best. Argument would only
confirm him in his prejudices. So it was
settled that the subject should not be broached

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 99

in that quarter. It would have been bad for
me if it had been.

When I reflect now upon the guile of that
conversation, the falsehood of my representa-
tions and the wickedness of my motive I am
almost ashamed to proceed with my narrative.
Had the minister been other than an arrant
humbug, I hope I should never have suffered
myself to make him the dupe of a scheme so
sacrilegious in itself, and prosecuted with so
sinful a disregard of honor.

The memorable Sabbath dawned bright
and beautiful. About nine o'clock the cracked
old bell, rigged up on struts before the "meet-
ing-house," began to clamor its call to service,
and nearly the whole population of Harding
took its way to the performance. I had taken
the precaution to set my watch fifteen minutes
fast. Tom was nervously preparing himself
for the ordeal. He fidgeted himself into his
best suit an hour before the time, carried his
hat about the room in the most aimless and de-
mented way and consulted his watch a hund-
red times. I was to accompany him to church,
and I spent the time fussing about the room,
doing the most extraordinary things in the
most exasperating manner — in short, keeping
up Tom's feverish excitement by every wicked

100 THE COLLECTED WORKS

device I could think of. Within a half hour
of the real time for service I suddenly yelled
out —

"O, I say, Tom; pardon me, but that head
of yours is just frightful! Please do let me
brush it up a bit!"

Seizing him by the shoulders I thrust him
into a chair with his face to the w^all, laid
hold of his comb and brush, got behind him
and went to work. He was trembling like a
child, and knew no more what I was doing
than if he had been brained. Now, Tom's
head was a curiosity. His hair, which was
remarkably thick, was like wire. Being cut
rather short it stood out all over his scalp like
the spines on a porcupine. It had been a
favorite complaint of Tom's that he never
could do anything to that head. I found no
difficulty — I did something to it, though I
blush to think what it was. I did something
which I feared he might discover if he looked
in the mirror, so I carelessly pulled out my
watch, sprung it open, gave a start and
shouted —

"By Jove! Thomas — pardon the oath — but
we're late. Your watch is all wrong; look at
mine! Here's your hat, old fellow; come
along. There's not a moment to lose!"

OF AMBROSE BIERCE

101

Clapping his hat on his head, I pulled him
out of the house, with actual violence. In five
minutes more we were in the meeting-house
with ever so much time to spare.

The services that day, I am told, were spec-
ially interesting and impressive, but I had a
good deal else on my mind — was preoccupied,
absent, inattentive. They might have varied
from the usual profane exhibition in any
respect and to any extent, and I should not
have observed it. The first thing I clearly
perceived was a rank of "converts" kneeling
before the "altar," Tom at the left of the line.
Then the Rev. Mr. Swin approached him,
thoughtfully dipping his fingers into a small
earthern bowl of water as if he had just
finished dining. I was much affected: I could
see nothing distinctly for my tears. My hand-
kerchief was at my face — most of it inside. I
was observed to sob spasmodically, and I am
abashed to think how many sincere persons
mistakenly followed my example.

With some solemn words, the purport of
which I did not quite make out, except that
they sounded like swearing, the minister stood
before Thomas, gave me a glance of intellig-
ence and then with an innocent expression
of face, the recollection of which to this day

102 THE COLLECTED WORKS

fills me with remorse, spilled, as if by accid-
ent, the entire contents of the bowl on the
head of my poor friend — that head into the
hair of which I had sifted a prodigal profu-
sion of Seidlitz-powders!

I confess it, the effect was magical — anyone
who was present would tell you that.
Tom's pow simmered — it seethed — it foamed
yeastily, and slavered like a mad dog! It
steamed and hissed, with angry spurts and
flashes! In a second it had grown bigger than
a small snowbank, and whiter. It surged, and
boiled, and walloped, and overflowed, and
sputtered — sent off feathery flakes like down
from a shot swan! The froth poured cream-
ing over his face, and got into his eyes. It was
the most sinful shampooing of the season!

I cannot relate the commotion this pro-
duced, nor would I if I could. As to Tom, he
sprang to his feet and staggered out of the
house, groping his way between the pews,
sputtering strangled profanity and gasping
like a stranded fish. The other candidates for
baptism rose also, shaking their pates as if to
say, ''No you don't, my hearty," and left the
house in a body. Amidst unbroken silence the
minister reascended the pulpit with the empty
bowl in his hand, and was first to speak:

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 103

"Brethren and sisters," said he with calm,
deliberate evenness of tone, "I have held forth
in this tabernacle for many more years than I
have got fingers and toes, and during that time
I have known not guile, nor anger, nor
any uncharitableness. As to Henry Barber,
who put up this job on me, I judge him not
lest I be judged. Let him take that and sin
no more!" — and he flung the earthern bowl
with so true an aim that it was shattered
against my skull. The rebuke was not un-
deserved, I confess, and I trust I have profited
by it.

104 THE COLLECTED WORKS

THE RACE AT LEFT BOWER

IT'S all very well fer you Britishers to go
assin' about the country tryin' to strike
the trail o' the mines youVe salted down
yer loose carpital in," said Colonel
Jackhigh, setting his empty glass on the coun-
ter and wiping his lips with his coat sleeve;
"but w'en it comes to boss racin', w'y Fve got
a cayuse ken lay over all the thurrerbreds yer
little mantel-ornyment of a island ever
panned out — bet yer britches I have! Talk
about yer Durby winners — w'y this pisen
little beast o' mine'll take the bit in her teeth
and show 'em the way to the horizon like she
was takin' her mornin' stroll and they was
tryin' to keep an eye on her to see she didn't
do herself an injury — that's w'at she would!
And she haint never run a race with any-
thing spryer'n an Injun in all her life; she's
a green amatoor, she is!"

"Oh, very well," said the Englishman with
a quiet smile; "it is easy enough to settle the
matter. My animal is in tolerably good condi-
tion, and if yours is in town we can have the

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 105

race to-morrow for any stake you like^, up to
a hundred dollars.

"That's jest the figger," said the colonel;
"dot it down, barkeep. But it's like slarterin'
the innocents," he added, half-remorsefully, as
he turned to leave; "it's bettin' on a dead sure
thing — that's what it is! If my cayuse knew
wa't I was about she'd go and break a laig to
make the race a fair one."

So it was arranged that the race was to
come off at three o'clock the next day, on the
mesa, some distance from town. As soon as
the news got abroad, the whole population of
Left Bower and vicinity knocked off work and
assembled in the various bars to discuss it. The
Englishman and his horse were general favor-
ites, and aside from the unpopularity of the
colonel, nobody had ever seen his "cayuse."
Still the element of patriotism came in, mak-
ing the betting very nearly even.

A race-course was marked off on the mesa
and at the appointed hour every one was there
except the colonel. It was arranged that each
man should ride his own horse, and the Eng-
lishman, who had acquired something of the
free-and-easy bearing that distinguishes the
"mining sharp," was already atop of his mag-
nificent animal, with one leg thrown carelessly

106 THE COLLECTED WORKS

across the pommel of his Mexican saddle, as
he puffed his cigar with calm confidence in
the result of the race. He was conscious, too,
that he possessed the secret sympathy of all,
even of those who had felt it their duty to bet
against him. The judge, watch in hand, was
growing impatient, when the colonel ap-
peared about a half-mile away, and bore
down upon the crowd. Everyone was eager
to inspect his mount; and such a mount as it
proved to be was never before seen, even in
Left Bower!

You have seen "perfect skeletons" of horses
often enough, no doubt, but this animal was
not even a perfect skeleton ; there were bones
missing here and there which you would not
have believed the beast could have spared.
"Little" the colonel had called her! She was
not an inch less than eighteen hands high, and
long out of all reasonable proportion. She
was so hollow in the back that she seemed to
have been bent in a machine. She had neither
tail nor mane, and her neck, as long as a man,
stuck straight up into the air, supporting a
head without ears. Her eyes had an expres-
sion in them of downright insanity, and the
muscles of her face were afflicted with
periodical convulsions that drew back the cor-

1

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 107

ners of the mouth and wrinkled the upper lip
so as to produce a ghastly grin every two or
three seconds. In color she was "claybank,"
with great blotches of white, as if she had been
pelted with small bags of flour. The crooked-
ness of her legs was beyond all comparison,
and as to her gait it was that of a blind camel
walking diagonally across innumerable deep
ditches. Altogether she looked like the crude
result of Nature's first experiment in equifac-
tion.

As this libel on all horses shambled up to
the starting post there was a general shout; the
sympathies of the crowd changed in the
twinkling of an eye! Everyone wanted to bet
on her, and the Englishman himself was only
restrained from doing so by a sense of honor.
It was growing late, however, and the judge
insisted on starting them. They got off very
well together, and seeing the mare was uncon-
scionably slow the Englishman soon pulled
his animal in and permitted the ugly thing to
pass him, so as to enjoy a back view of her.
That sealed his fate. The course had been
marked off in a circle of two miles in circum-
ference and some twenty feet wide, the limits
plainly defined by little furrows. Before the
animals had gone a half mile both had been

108 THE COLLECTED WORKS

permitted to settle down into a comfortable
walk, in which they continued three-fourths
of the way round the ring. Then the English-
man thought it time to whip up and canter in.

But he didn't. As he came up alongside the
^'Lightning Express," as the crowd had begun
to call her, that creature turned her head
diagonally backward and let fall a smile. The
encroaching beast stopped as if he had been
shot! His rider plied whip, and forced him
again forward upon the track of the equine
hag, but with the same result.

The Englishman was now alarmed; he
struggled manfully with rein and whip and
shout, amidst the tremendous cheering and
inextinguishable laughter of the crowd, to
force his animal past, now on this side, now
on that, but it would not do. Prompted by
the fiend in the concavity of her back, the
unthinkable quadruped dropped her grins
right and left with such seasonable accuracy
that again and again the competing beast was i
struck "all of a heap" just at the moment of "
seeming success. And, finally, when by a
tremendous spurt his rider endeavored to
thrust him by, within half a dozen lengths of
the winning post, the incarnate nightmare
turned squarely about and fixed upon him a

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 109

portentous stare — delivering at the same time
a grimace of such prodigious ghastliness that
the poor thoroughbred, with an almost human
scream of terror, wheeled about, and tore
away to the rear with the speed of the wind,
leaving the colonel an easy winner in twenty
minutes and ten seconds.

110 THE COLLECTED WORKS

THE FAILURE OF HOPE & WANDEL

From Mr. Jabez Hope, in Chicago, to Mr.
Pike Wandel, of New Orleans, December
2, 1877.

I WILL not bore you, my dear fellow,
with a narrative of my journey from
New Orleans to this polar region. It
is cold in Chicago, believe me, and the
Southron who comes here, as I did, without
a relay of noses and ears will have reason to
regret his mistaken economy in arranging his
outfit.

To business. Lake Michigan is frozen stiff.
Fancy, O child of a torrid clime, a sheet of
anybody's ice, three hundred miles long, forty
broad, and six feet thick! It sounds like a lie,
Pikey dear, but your partner in the firm of
Hope & Wandel, Wholesale Boots and Shoes,
New Orleans, is never known to fib. My plan
is to collar that ice. Wind up the present busi-
ness and send on the money at once. I'll put

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 111

up a warehouse as big as the Capitol at
Washington, store it full and ship to your
orders as the Southern market may require. I
can send it in planks for skating floors, in
statuettes for the mantel, in shavings for
juleps, or in solution for ice cream and gen-
eral purposes. It is a big thing!

I inclose a thin slip as a sample. Did you
ever see such charming ice?

From Mr. Pike Wandel, of New Orleans, to
Mr. Jabez Hope, in Chicago, December
24, 1877.

Your letter was so abominably defaced by
blotting and blurring that it was entirely
illegible. It must have come all the way by
water. By the aid of chemicals and photo-
graphy, however, I have made it out. But
you forgot to inclose the sample of ice.

I have sold off everything (at an alarming
sacrifice, I am sorry to say) and inclose draft
for net amount. Shall begin to spar for orders
at once. I trust everything to you — but, I say,
has anybody tried to grow ice in this vicinity?
There is Lake Ponchartrain, you know.

112 THE COLLECTED WORKS

From Mr, Jabez Hope, in Chicago, to Mr.
Pike Wandel, of New Orleans, February

27, 1878.

Wannie dear, it would do you good to see
our new warehouse for the ice. Though made
of boards, and run up rather hastily, it is as
pretty as a picture, and cost a deal of money,
though I pay no ground rent. It is about as
big as the Capitol at Washington. Do you
think It ought to have a steeple? I have it
nearly filled — fifty men cutting and storing,
day and night — awful cold work! By the way,
the ice, which when I wrote you last was ten
feet thick, is now thinner. But don't you
worry; there is plenty.

Our warehouse is eight or ten miles out of
town, so I am not much bothered by visitors,
which is a relief. Such a giggling, snigger-
ing lot you never saw!

It seems almost too absurdly incredible,
Wannie, but do you know I believe this ice of
ours gains in coldness as the warm weather
comes on! I do, indeed, and you may mention
the fact in the advertisements.

Brom Mr, Pike Wandel, of New Orleans, to

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 113

Mr, Jabez Hope, in Chicago, March 7,
1878.

All goes well. I get hundreds of orders.
We shall do a roaring trade as "The New
Orleans and Chicago Semperfrigid Ice Com-
pany." But you have not told me whether the
ice is fresh or salt. If it is fresh it won't do
for cooking, and if it is salt it will spoil the
mint juleps.

Is it as cold in the middle as the outside cuts
are?

From Mr, Jebez Hope, from Chicago, to Mr,
Pike Wand el, of New Orleans, April 3,
1878.

Navigation on the Lakes is now open, and
ships are thick as ducks. I'm afloat, en route
for Buffalo, with the assets of the New
Orleans and Chicago Semperfrigid Ice Com-
pany in my vest pocket. We are busted out,
my poor Pikey — ^we are to fortune and to fame
unknown. Arrange a meeting of the creditors
and don't attend.

Last night a schooner from Milwaukee was
smashed into match-wood on an enormous

114 THE COLLECTED WORKS

mass of floating ice — the first berg ever seen
in these waters. It is described by the surviv-
ors as being about as big as the Capital at
Washington. One-half of that iceberg bcr
longs to you, Pikey.

The melancholy fact is, I built our ware-
house on an unfavorable site, about a mile out
from the shore (on the ice, you understand),
and when the thaw came — O my God, Wan-
nie, it was the saddest thing you ever saw in
all your life! You will be so glad to know I
was not in it at the time.

What a ridiculous question you ask me. My
poor partner, you don't seem to know very
much about the ice business.

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 115

PERRY CHUMLY'S ECLIPSE

THE spectroscope is a singularly
beautiful and delicate instrument,
consisting, essentially, of a prism of
glass, which, decomposing the light
of any heavenly body to which the instrument
is directed, presents a spectrum, or long bar
of color. Crossing this are narrow, dark and
bright lines produced by the gases of metals
in combustion, whereby the celestial orb's
light is generated. From these dark and
bright lines, therefore, we ascertain all that is
worth knowing about the composition of the
sun and stars.

Now Ben had made some striking discover-
ies in spectroscopic analysis at his private gar-
den observatory, and had also an instrument
of superior power and capacity, invented, or
at least much improved, by himself; and this
instrument it was that he and I were arrang-
ing for an examination of the comet then
flaming in the heavens. William sat by

116 THE COLLECTED WORKS

apparently uninterested. Finally we had our
arrangements for an observation completed,
and Ben said: "Now turn her on."

"That reminds me," said William, "of a
little story about Perry Chumly, who — "

"For the sake of science, William," I inter-
rupted, laying a hand on his arm, "I must beg
you not to relate it. The comet will in a few
minutes be behind the roof of yonder lodging
house. We really have no time for the story."

"No," said Ben, "time presses; and, any-
how, I've heard it before."

"This Perry Chumly," resumed William,
"believed himself a born astronomer, and
always kept a bit of smoked glass. He was par-
ticularly great on solar eclipses. I have known
him to sit up all night looking out for one."

Ben had now got the spectroscope trained
skyward to suit him, and in order to
exclude all irrelevant light had let down the
window-blind on the tube of it. The spect-
rum of the comet came out beautifully — a
long bar of color crossed with a lovely ruling
of thin dark and bright lines, the sight of
which elicited from us an exclamation of
satisfaction.

"One day," continued William from his
seat at another window, "some one told Perry

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 117

Chumly there would be an eclipse of the sun
that afternoon at three o'clock. Now Perry
had recently read a story about some men who
in exploring a deep canon in the mountains
had looked up from the bottom and seen the
stars shining at midday. It occurred to him
that this knowledge might be so utilized as
to give him a fine view of the eclipse, and
enable him at the same time to see what the
stars would appear to think about it."

''This/' said Ben, pointing to one of the
dark lines in the cometic spectrum, ''this is
produced by the vapor of carbon in the nucleus
of the heavenly visitant. You will observe
that it differs but slightly from the lines that
come of volatilized iron. Examined with this
magnifying glass" — adjusting that instrument
to his eye — "it will probably show — by Jovel"
he ejaculated, after a nearer view, "it isn't car-
bon at all. ///jMEAt!"

"Of course," proceeded William, "of course
Perry Chumly did not have any canon, so what
did the fellow do but let himself down with
his arms and legs to the bottom of an old well,
about thirty feet deep! And, with the cold
water up to his middle, and the frogs, polly-
wogs and aquatic lizards quarreling for the
cosy corners of his pockets, there he stood,

118 THE COLLECTED WORKS

waiting for the sun to appear in the field of his
'instrument' and be eclipsed."

"Ben, you are joking/' I remarked with
some asperity; "you are taking liberties with
science, Benjamin. It can^t be meat, you
know."

"I tell you it is though," was his excited
reply; "it is just meat, I tell you! And this
other line, which at first I took for sodium, is
bone — bone, sir, or I'm an asteroid! I never
saw the like; that comet must be densely
peopled with butchers and horse-knackers!"

"When Perry Chumly had waited a long
time," William went on to say, "looking up
and expecting every minute to see the sun, it
began to get into his mind, somehow, that the
bright, circular opening above his head — the
mouth of the well — was the sun, and that the
black disk of the moon was all that was needed
to complete the expected phenomenon. The
notion soon took complete posession of his
brain, so that he forgot where he was and
imagined himself standing on the surface of
the earth."

I was now scrutinizing the cometic spect-
rum very closely, being particularly attracted
by a thin, faint line, which I thought Ben had
overlooked.

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 119

"Oh, that is nothing," he explained ; "that's
a mere local fault arising from conditions
peculiar to the medium through which the
light is transmitted — the atmosphere of this
neighborhood. It is whisky. This other line,
though, shows the faintest imaginable trace of
soap ; and these uncertain, wavering ones are
caused by some effluvium not in the comet
itself, but in the region beyond it. I am com-
pelled to pronounce it tobacco smoke. I will
now tilt the instrument so as to get the spect-
rum of the celestial wanderer's tail. Ah! there
we have it. Splendid!"

"Now this old well," said William, "was
near a road, along which was traveling a big
and particularly hideous nigger."

"See here, Thomas," exclaimed Ben, remov-
ing the magnifying glass from his eye and
looking me earnestly in the face, "if I were
to tell you that the coma of this eccentric
heavenly body is really hair, as its name im-
plies, would you believe it?"

"No, Ben, I certainly should not."

"Well, I won't argue the matter; there are
the lines — they speak for themselves. But now
that I look again, you are not entirely wrong:
there is a considerable admixture of jute,
moss, and I think tallow. It certainly is

120 THE COLLECTED WORKS

most remarkable! Sir Isaac Newton "

"That big nigger," drawled William, "felt
thirsty, and seeing the mouth of the well
thought there was perhaps a bucket in it. So
he ventured to creep forward on his hands
and knees and look in over the edge."

Suddenly our spectrum vanished, and a
very singular one of a quite different appear-
ance presented itself in the same place. It
was a dim spectrum, crossed by a single broad
bar of pale yellow.

"Ah!" said Ben, "our waif of the upper
deep is obscured by a cloud; let us see what
the misty veil is made of."

He took a look at the spectrum with his
magnifying glass, started back, and muttered:
"Brown linen, by thunder!"

"You can imagine the rapture of Perry
Chumly," pursued the indefatigable William,
"when he saw, as he supposed, the moon's
black disk encroaching upon the body of the
luminary that had so long riveted his gaze.
But when that obscuring satellite had thrust
herself so far forward that the eclipse became
almost annular, and he saw her staring down
upon a darkened world with glittering white
eyes and a double row of flashing teeth, it is
perhaps not surprising that he vented a

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 121

scream of terror, fainted and collapsed among
his frogs! As for the big nigger, almost
equally terrified by this shriek from the abyss,
he executed a precipitate movement which
only the breaking of his neck prevented from
being a double back-somersault, and lay dead
in the weeds with his tongue out and his face
the color of a cometic spectrum. We laid
them in the same grave, poor fellows, and on
many a still summer evening afterward I
strayed to the lonely little church-yard to
listen to the smothered requiem chanted by
the frogs that we had neglected to remove
from the pockets of the lamented astronomer.
"And, now," added William, taking his
heels from the window, "as you can not im-
mediately resume your spectroscopic observ-
ations on that red-haired chamber-maid in
the dormer-window, who pulled down the
blind when I made a mouth at her, I move
that we adjourn."

122 THE COLLECTED WORKS

A PROVIDENTIAL INTIMATION

MR. ALGERNON JARVIS, of
San Francisco, got up cross. The
world of Mr. Jarvis had gone
wrong with him overnight, as
one's world is likely to do when one sits up
till morning with jovial friends, to watch it,
and he was prone to resentment. No sooner,
therefore, had he got himself into a neat,
fashionable suit of clothing than he selected
his morning walking-stick and sallied out
upon the town with a vague general determ-
ination to attack something. His first victim
would naturally have been his breakfast; but
singularly enough, he fell upon this with so
feeble an energy that he was himself beaten —
to the grieved astonishment of the worthy
rotisseur, who had to record his hitherto
puissant patron's maiden defeat. Three or
four cups of cafe noir were the only captives
that graced Mr. Jarvis' gastric chariot-wheels
that morning.

He lit a long cigar and sauntered moodily
down the street, so occupied with schemes of

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 123

universal retaliation that his feet had it all
their own way; in consequence of which, their
owner soon found himself in the billiard-
room of the Occidental Hotel. Nobody was
there, but Mr. Jarvis was a privileged person;
so, going to the marker's desk, he took out a
little box of ivory balls, spilled them care-
lessly over a table and languidly assailed them
with a long stick.

Presently, by the merest chance, he executed
a marvelous stroke. Waiting till the aston-
ished balls had resumed their composure, he
gathered them up, replacing them in their
former position. He tried the stroke again,
and, naturally, did not make it. Again he
placed the balls, and again he badly failed.
With a vexed and humilated air he once more
put the indocile globes into position, leaned
over the table and was upon the point of
striking, when there sounded a solemn voice
from behind:
"Bet you two bits you don't make it!"
Mr. Jarvis erected himself; he turned
about and looked at the speaker, whom he
found to be a stranger — one that most persons
would prefer should remain a stranger. Mr.
Jarvis made no reply. In the first place, he
was a man of aristocratic taste, to whom ^

124 THE COLLECTED WORKS

wager of "two bits" was simply vulgar.
Secondly, the man who had proffered it evi-
dently had not the money. Still it is annoy-
ing to have one's skill questioned by one's
social inferiors, particularly when one has
doubts of it oneself, and is otherwise ill-tem-
pered. So Mr. Jarvis stood his cue against
the table, laid off his fashionable morning-
coat, resumed his stick, spread his fine figure
upon the table with his back to the ceiling
and took deliberate aim.

At this point Mr. Jarvis drops out of this
history, and is seen no more forever. Persons
of the class to which he adds lustre are sacred
from the pen of the humorist; they are ridicul-
ous but not amusing. So now we will dismiss
this uninteresting young aristocrat, retaining
merely his outer shell, the fashionable morn-
ing-coat, which Mr. Stenner, the gentleman,
who had offered the wager, has quietly thrown
across his arm and is conveying away for his
own advantage.

An hour later Mr. Stenner sat in his humble
lodgings at North Beach, with the pilfered
garment upon his knees. He had already taken
the opinion of an eminent pawnbroker on its
value, and it only remained to search the
pockets. Mr, Stenner's notions concerning

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 125

gentlemen's coats were not so clear as they
might have been. Broadly stated, they were
that these garments abounded in secret pock-
ets crowded with a wealth of bank notes inter-
spersed with gold coins. He was therefore
disappointed when his careful quest was re-
warded with only a delicately perfumed hand-
kerchief, upon which he could not hope to
obtain a loan of more than ten cents; a pair
of gloves too small for use and a bit of paper
that was not a cheque. A second look at this,
however, inspired hope. It was about the
size of a flounder, ruled in wide lines, and bore
in conspicuous characters the words, "West-
ern Union Telegraph Company." Im-
mediately below this interesting legend was
much other printed matter, the purport of
which was that the company did not hold
itself responsible for the verbal accuracy of
"the following message," and did not con-
sider itself either morally or legally bound to
forward or deliver it, nor, in short, to render
any kind of service for the money paid by
the sender.

Unfamiliar with telegraphy, Mr. Stenncr
naturally supposed that a message subject to
these hard conditions must be one of not only
grave importance, but questionable character.

126 THE COLLECTED WORKS

So he determined to decipher it at that time
and place. In the course of the day he suc-
ceeded in so doing. It ran as follows, omitt-
ing the date and the names of persons and
places, which were, of course, quite illegible :

^'Buy Sally Meeker 1"

Had the full force of this remarkable ad-
juration burst upon Mr. Stenner all at once
it might have carried him away, which would
not have been so bad a thing for San Fran-
cisco; but as the meaning had to percolate
slowly through a dense dyke of ignorance, it
produced no other immediate effect than the
exclamation, 'Well, I'll be bust!"

In the mouths of some persons this form of
expression means a great deal. On the Sten-
ner tongue it signified the hopeless nature of
the Stenner mental confusion.

It must be confessed — by persons outside
a certain limited and sordid circle — that
the message lacks amplification and elabora-
tion; in its terse, bald diction there is a ghastly
suggestion of traffic in human flesh, for which
in California there is no market since the
abolition of slavery and the importation of
thoroughbred beeves. If woman suffrage had
been established all would have been clear;
Ma Stenner would at once have understood

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 127

the kind of purchase advised ; for in political
transactions he had very often changed hands
himself. But it was all a muddle, and resolv-
ing to dismiss the matter from his thoughts,
he went to bed thinking of nothing else; for
many hours his excited imagination would
do nothing but purchase slightly damaged
Sally Meekers by the bale, and retail them to
itself at an enormous profit.

Next day, it flashed upon his memory who
Sally Meeker was — a racing mare! At this
entirely obvious solution of the problem he
was overcome with amazement at his own
sagacity. Rushing into the street he pur-
chased, not Sally Meeker, but a sporting
paper — and in it found the notice of a race
which was to come off the following week;
and, sure enough, there it was:

"Budd Doble enters g. g. Clipper; Bob
Scotty enters b. g. Lightnin'; Staley Tupper
enters s. s. Upandust; Sim Salper enters b.
m. Sally Meeker."

It was clear now; the sender of the dis-
patch was "in the know." Sally Meeker was
to win, and her owner, who did not know it,
had offered her for sale. At that supreme
moment Mr. Stenner would willingly have
been a rich man I In fact he resolved to be.

128 THE COLLECTED WORKS

He at once betook him to Vallejo, where he
had lived until invited away by some influen-
tial citizens of the place. There he immedi-
ately sought out an industrious friend who had
an amiable weakness for draw poker, and in
whom Mr. Stenner regularly encouraged that
passion by going up against him every payday
and despoiling him of his hard earnings. He
did so this time, to the sum of one hundred
dollars.

No sooner had he raked in his last pool
and refused his friend's appeal for a trifling
loan wherewith to pay for breakfast than he
bought a check on the Bank of California,
enclosed it in a letter containing merely the
words "Bi Saly Meker," and dispatched it by
mail to the only clergyman in San Francisco
whose name he knew. Mr. Stenner had a
vague notion that all kinds of business requir-
ing strict honesty and fidelity might be profit-
ably intrusted to the clergy; otherwise what
was the use of religion? I hope I shall not
be accused of disrespect to the cloth in thus
bluntly setting forth Mr. Stenner's estimate
of the parsons, inasmuch as I do not share it.

This business off his mind, Mr. Stenner
unbent in a week's revelry; at the end of which
he worked his passage down to San Fran-

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 129

Cisco to secure his winnings on the race, and
take charge of his peerless mare. It will be
observed that his notions concerning races
were somewhat confused; his experience of
them had hitherto been confined to that branch
of the business requiring, not technical knowl-
edge but manual dexterity. In short, he had
done no more than pick the pockets of the
spectators. Arrived at San Francisco he was
hastening to the dwelling of his clerical agent,
when he met an acquaintance, to whom he put
the triumphant question, "How about Sally
Meeker?"

"Sally Meeker? Sally Meeker?" was the
reply. "Oh, you mean the boss? Why she's
gone up the flume. Broke her neck the first
heat. But ole Sim Salper is never a-goin' to
fret hisself to a shadder about it. He struck
it pizen in the mine she was named a'ter and
the stock's gone up from nothin' out o' sight.
You couldn't tech that stock with a ten-foot
polel"

Which was a blow to Mr. Stenner. He saw
his error; the message in the coat had evi-
dently been sent to a broker, and referred to
the stock of the "Sally Meeker" mine. And
he, Stenner, was a ruined manl

Suddenly a great, pionstrous, misbegotten

130 THE COLLECTED WORKS

and unmentionable oath rolled from Mr.
Stenner's tongue like a cannon shot hurled
along an uneven floor! Might it not be
that the Rev. Mr. Boltright had also mis-
understood the message, and had bought, not
the mare, but the stock? The thought was
electrical: Mr. Stenner ran — he flewl He
tarried not at walls and the smaller sort of
houses, but went through or over theml In five
minutes he stood before the good clergyman
— and in one more had asked, in a hoarse
whisper, if he had bought any "Sally
Meeker."

"My good friend," was the bland reply —
"my fellow traveler to the bar of God, it
would better comport with your spiritual
needs to inquire what you should do to be
saved. But since you ask me, I will confess
that having received what I am compelled to i
regard as a Providential intimation, accom-
panied with the secular means of obedience,
I did put up a small margin and purchase
largely of the stock you mention. The ven-
ture, I am constrained to state, was not wholly
unprofitable."

tjnprofitable? The good man had made .
a square twenty-five thousand dollars on that '
small margin I To conclude — he has it yet

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 131

MR. SWIDDLER'S FLIP-FLAP

JEROME BOWLES (said the gentle-
man called Swiddler) was to be hanged
on Friday, the ninth of November, at
five o'clock in the afternoon. This was
to occur at the town of Flatbroke, where he
was then in prison. Jerome was my friend,
and naturally I differed with the jury that
had convicted him as to the degree of guilt
implied by the conceded fact that he
had shot an Indian without direct pro-
vocation. Ever since his trial I had been
endeavoring to influence the Governor of the
State to grant a pardon; but public sentiment
was against me, a fact which I attributed
partly to the innate pigheadness of the people,
and partly to the recent establishment of
churches and schools which had corrupted the
primitive notions of a frontier community.
But I labored hard and unremittingly by all
manner of direct and indirect means during
the whole period in which Jerome lay under
sentence of death; and on the very morning

132 THE COLLECTED WORKS

of the day set for the execution, the Governor
sent for me, and saying "he did not purpose
being worried by my importunities all win-
ter," handed me the document which he had
so often refused.

Armed with the precious paper, I flew to
the telegraph office to send a dispatch to the
Sheriff at Flatbroke. I found the operator
locking the door of the office and putting
up the shutters. I pleaded in vain ; he said he
was going to see the hanging, and really had
no time to send my message. I must explain
that Flatbroke was fifteen miles away; I was
then at Swan Creek, the State capital.

The operator being inexorable, I ran to the
railroad station to see how soon there would
be a train for Flatbroke. The station man,
with cool and polite malice, informed me that
all the employees of the road had been given a
holiday to see Jerome Bowles hanged, and had
already gone by an early train; that there
would be no other train till the next day.

I was now furious, but the station man
quietly turned me out, locking the gates. Dash-
ing to the nearest livery stable, I ordered a
horse. Why prolong the record of my dis-
appointment? Not a horse could I get in that
town; all had been engaged weeks before to

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 133

take people to the hanging. So everybody said,
at least, though I now know there was a ras-
cally conspiracy to defeat the ends of mercy,
for the story of the pardon had got abroad.

It was now ten o'clock. I had only seven
hours in which to do my fifteen miles afoot;
but I was an excellent walker and thoroughly
angry; there was no doubt of my ability to
make the distance, with an hour to spare. The
railway offered the best chance ; it ran straight
as a string across a level, treeless prairie,
whereas the highway made a wide detour by
way of another town.

I took to the track like a Modoc on the war
path. Before I had gone a half-mile I was
overtaken by "That Jim Peasley," as he was
called in Swan Creek, an incurable practical
joker, loved and shunned by all who knew
him. He asked me as he came up if I were
"going to the show." Thinking it was best to
dissemble, I told him I was, but said nothing
of my intention to stop the performance; I
thought it would be a lesson to That Jim to let
him walk fifteen miles for nothing, for it was
clear that he was going, too. Still, I wished he
would go on ahead or drop behind. But he
could not very well do the former, and would
not do the latter; so we trudged on together.

134 THE COLLECTED WORKS

It was a cloudy day and very sultry for that
time of the year. The railway stretched away
before us, between its double row of telegraph
poles, in rigid sameness, terminating in a point
at the horizon. On either hand the disheart-
ening monotony of the prairie was unbroken.

I thought little of these things, however, for
my mental exaltation was proof against the
depressing influence of the scene. I was about
to save the life of my friend — to restore a crack
shot to society. Indeed I scarcely thought of
That Jim, whose heels were grinding the hard
gravel close behind me, except when he saw
fit occasionally to propound the sententious,
and I thought derisive, query, ^Tired?" Of
course I was, but I would have died rather
than confess it.

We had gone in this way, about half the
distance, probably, in much less than half the
seven hours, and I was getting my second wind,
when That Jim again broke the silence.

"Used to bounce in a circus, didn't you?"

This was quite true! in a season of pecun-
iary depression I had once put my legs into
my stomach — had turned my athletic accomp-
lishments to financial advantage. It was not
a pleasant topic, and I said nothing. That Jim
persisted.

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 135

"Wouldn't like to do a feller a somersault
now, eh?"

The mocking tongue of this jeer was intoler-
able; the fellow evidently considered me
"done up," so taking a short run I clapped my
hands to my thighs and executed as pretty a
flip-flap as ever was made without a spring-
board ! At the moment I came erect with my
head still spinning, I felt That Jim crowd
past me, giving me a twirl that almost sent me
off the track. A moment later he had dashed
ahead at a tremendous pace, laughing deris-
ively over his shoulder as if he had done a
remarkably clever thing to gain the lead.

I was on the heels of him in less than ten
minutes, though I must confess the fellow
could walk amazingly. In half an hour I had
run past him, and at the end of the hour, such
was my slashing gait, he was a mere black dot
in my rear, and appeared to be sitting on one
of the rails, thoroughly used up.

Relieved of Mr. Peasley, I naturally began
thinking of my poor friend in the Flatbroke
jail, and it occurred to me that something
might happen to hasten the execution. I knew
the feeling of the country against him, and that
many would be there from a distance who
would naturally wish to get home before

136 THE COLLECTED WORKS

nightfall. Nor could I help admitting to my-
self that five o'clock was an unreasonably late
hour for a hanging. Tortured with these
fears, I unconsciously increased my pace with
every step, until it was almost a run. I
stripped off my coat and flung it away, opened
my collar, and unbuttoned my waistcoat. And
at last, puffing and steaming like a locomot-
ive engine, I burst into a thin crowd of idlers
on the outskirts of the town, and flourished
the pardon crazily above my head, yelling,
"Cut him down! — cut him down!"

Then, as every one stared in blank amaze-
ment and nobody said anything, I found time
to look about me, marveling at the oddly
familiar appearance of the town. As I looked,
the houses, streets, and everything seemed to
undergo a sudden and mysterious transposi-
tion with reference to the points of the com-
pass, as if swinging round on a pivot; and like
one awakened from a dream I found myself
among accustomed scenes. To be plain about
it, I was back again in Swan Creek, as right as
a trivet!

It was all the work of That Jim Peasley.
The designing rascal had provoked me to
throw a confusing somersault, then bumped
against me, turning me half round, and started

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 187

on the back track, thereby inciting me to hook
it in the same direction. The cloudy day, the
two lines of telegraph poles, one on each side
of the track, the entire sameness of the land-
scape to the right and left — these had all con-
spired to prevent my observing that I had put
about.

When the excursion train returned from
Flatbroke that evening the passengers were
told a little story at my expense. It was just
what they needed to cheer them up a bit after
what they had seen ; for that flip-flap of mine
had broken the neck of Jerome Bowles seven
miles awayl

138 THE COLLECTED WORKS

THE LITTLE STORY

Dramatis Persons — A Supernumerary
Editor. A Probationary Contributor.

Scene— "TA^ Expounder'' Office.

Probationary Contributor— Editor in?

Supernumerary Editor— Dead.

P. C. — The gods favor me. [Produces roll
of manuscript.) Here is a little story, which I
will read to you.

S. E.— O, O!

P. C— (Reads.) "It was the last night of
the year — a naughty, noxious, offensive night.
In the principal street of San Francisco"

S. E. — Confound San Francisco!

P. C. — It had to be somewhere. (Reads.)

"In the principal street of San Francisco
stood a small female orphan, marking time
like a volunteer. Her little bare feet imprinted
cold kisses on the paving-stones as she put them
down and drew them up alternately. The
chilling rain was having a good time with her
scalp, and toyed soppily with her hair — her

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 139

own hair. The night-wind shrewdly searched
her tattered garments, as if it had suspected
her of smuggling. She saw crowds of determ-
ined-looking persons grimly ruining them-
selves in toys and confectionery for the dear
ones at home, and she wished she was in a posi-
tion to ruin a little — just a little. Then, as the
happy throng sped by her with loads of things
to make the children sick, she leaned against
an iron lamp-post in front of a bake-shop and
turned on the wicked envy. She thought,
poor thing, she would like to be a
cake — for this little girl was very hungry
indeed. Then she tried again, and thought
she would like to be a tart with smashed fruit
inside ; then she would be warmed over every
day and nobody would eat her. For the child
was cold as well as hungry. Finally, she tried
quite hard, and thought she could be very well
content as an oven ; for then she would be kept
always hot, and bakers would put all manner
of good things into her with a long shovel."

S. E. — Fve read that somewhere.

P. C— Very likely. This little story has
never been rejected by any paper to which I
have offered it. It gets better, too, every time
I write it. When it first appeared in Veracity
the editor said it cost him a hundred

140 THE COLLECTED WORKS

subscribers. Just mark the improvement!
(Reads.)

"The hours glided by — except a few that
froze to the pavement — until midnight. The
streets were now deserted, and the almanac
having predicted a new moon about this time,
the lamps had been conscientiously extin-
guished. Suddenly a great globe of sound fell
from an adjacent church-tower, and exploded
on the night with a deep metallic boom. Then
all the clocks and bells began ringing-in the
New Year — pounding and banging and yell-
ing and finishing off all the nervous invalids
left over from the preceding Sunday. The
little orphan started from her dream, leaving
a small patch of skin on the frosted lamp-post,
clasped her thin blue hands and looked up-
ward, Vith mad disquietude,' " —

S. E. — In The Monitor it was "with covet-
ous eyes."

P. C. — I know it; hadn't read Byron then.
Clever dog, Byron. (Reads.)

"Presently a cranberry tart dropped at her
feet, apparently from the clouds."

S. E. — How about those angels?

P. C— The editor of Good Will cut 'em
out. He said San Francisco was no place for
them; and I don't believe

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 141

S. E. — There, there! Never mind. Go on
with the little story.

P. C. — {Reads,) "As she stooped to take up
the tart a veal sandwich came whizzing down,
and cuffed one of her ears. Next a wheaten
loaf made her dodge nimbly, and then a broad
ham fell flat-footed at her toes. A sack of
flour burst in the middle of the street; a side
of bacon impaled itself on an iron hitching-
post. Pretty soon a chain of sausages fell in a
circle around her, flattening out as if a road-
roller had passed over them. Then there was
a lull — nothing came down but dried fish, cold
puddings and flannel under-clothing; but
presently her wishes began to take effect again,
and a quarter of beef descended with terrific
momentum upon the top of the little orphan's
head."

S. E. — How did the editor of The Reason-
able Virtues like that quarter of beef?

P. C. — Oh, he swallowed it like a little man,
and stuck in a few dressed pigs of his own. IVe
left them out, because I don't want outsiders
altering the Little Story. {Reads,)

"One would have thought that ought to
suffice; but not so. Bedding, shoes, firkins of
butter, mighty cheeses, ropes of onions, quanti-
ties of loose jam, kegs of oysters, titanic fowls,

142 THE COLLECTED WORKS

crates of crockery and glassware, assorted
house-keeping things, cooking ranges, and tons
of coal poured down in broad cataracts from
a bounteous heaven, piling themselves above
that infant to a depth of twenty feet. The
weather was more than two hours in clearing
up; and as late as half-past three a ponderous
hogshead of sugar struck at the corner of Clay
and Kearney Streets, with an impact that shook
the peninsula like an earthquake and stopped
every clock in town.

"At daybreak the good merchants arrived
upon the scene with shovels and wheelbarrows,
and before the sun of the new year was an
hour old, they had provided for all of these
provisions — had stowed them away in their
cellars, and nicely arranged them on their
shelves, ready for sale to the deserving poor."

S. E. — ^And the little girl — what became of
her?

P. C. — You musn't get ahead of the Little
Story. {Reads.)

"When they had got down to the wicked
little orphan who had not been content with
her lot some one brought a broom, and she
was carefully swept and smoothed out. Then
they lifted her tenderly, and carried her to
the coroner. That functionary was standing

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 143

in the door of his office, and with a deprecat-
ory wave of his hand, he said to the man who
was bearing her :

" *There, go away, my good fellow ; there
was a man here three times yesterday trying
to sell me just such a map.' "

THE PARENTICIDE CLUB

MY FAVORITE MURDER

HAVING murdered my mother un-
der circumstances of singular
atrocity, I was arrested and put
upon my trial, which lasted
seven years. In charging the jury, the judge
of the Court of Acquittal remarked that it was
one of the most ghastly crimes that he had ever
been called upon to explain away.
At this, my attorney rose and said:
"May it please your Honor, crimes are
ghastly or agreeable only by comparison. If
you were familiar with the details of my
client's previous murder of his uncle you
would discern in his later offense (if offense
it may be called) something in the nature of
tender forbearance and filial consideration for
the feelings of the victim. The appalling
ferocity of the former assassination was indeed
inconsistent with any hypothesis but that of
guilt; and had it not been for the fact that the
honorable judge before whom he was tried
was the president of a life insurance company

148 THE COLLECTED WORKS

that took risks on hanging, and in which my
client held a policy, it is hard to see how he
could decently have been acquitted. If your
Honor would like to hear about it for instruc-
tion and guidance of your Honor's mind, this
unfortunate man, my client, will consent to
give himself the pain of relating it under
oath."

The district attorney said: "Your Honor, I
object. Such a statement would be in the
nature of evidence, and the testimony in this
case is closed. The prisoner's statement should
have been introduced three years ago, in the
spring of 1881."

"In a statutory sense," said the judge, "you
are right, and in the Court of Objections and
Technicalities you would get a ruling in your
favor. But not in a Court of Acquittal. The
objection is overruled."

"I except," said the district attorney.

"You cannot do that," the judge said. "I
must remind you that in order to take an ex-
ception you must first get this case transferred
for a time to the Court of Exceptions on a
formal motion duly supported by affidavits.
A motion to that efiPect by your predecessor in
office was denied by me during the first year
of this trial. Mr. Clerk, swear the prisoner."

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 149

The customary oath having been administ-
ered, I made the following statement, which
impressed the judge with so strong a sense of
the comparative triviality of the offense for
which I was on trial that he made no further
search for mitigating circumstances, but
simply instructed the jury to acquit, and I left
the court, without a stain upon my reputation :

"I was born in 1856 in Kalamakee, Mich.,
of honest and reputable parents, one of whom
Heaven has mercifully spared to comfort me
in my later years. In 1867 the family came to
California and settled near Nigger Head,
where my father opened a road agency and
prospered beyond the dreams of avarice. He
was a reticent, saturnine man then, though his
increasing years have now somewhat relaxed
the austerity of his disposition, and I believe
that nothing but his memory of the sad event
for which I am now on trial prevents him from
manifesting a genuine hilarity.

"Four years after we had set up the road
agency an itinerant preacher came along, and
having no other way to pay for the night's
lodging that we gave him, favored us with
an exhortation of such power that, praise God,
we were all converted to religion. My father
at once sent for his brother, the Hon. William

150 THE COLLECTED WORKS

Ridley of Stockton, and on his arrival turned
over the agency to him, charging him nothing
for the franchise nor plant — the latter consist-
ing of a Winchester rifle, a sawed-off shotgun,
and an assortment of masks made out of flour
sacks. The family then moved to Ghost Rock
and opened a dance house. It was called The
Saints' Rest Hurdy-Gurdy,' and the proceed-
ings each night began with prayer. It was
there that my now sainted mother, by her grace
in the dance, acquired the sobriquet of The
Bucking Walrus.'

"In the fall of '75 I had occasion to visit
Coyote, on the road to Mahala, and took the
stage at Ghost Rock. There were four other
passengers. About three miles beyond Nigger
Head, persons whom I identified as my
Uncle William and his two sons held up the
stage. Finding nothing in the express box,
they went through the passengers. I acted a
most honorable part in the affair, placing my-
self in line with the others, holding up my
hands and permitting myself to be deprived
of forty dollars and a gold watch. From my
behavior no one could have suspected that I
knew the gentlemen who gave the entertain-
ment. A few days later, when I went to Nig-
ger Head and asked for the return of my

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 151

money and watch my uncle and cousins swore
they knew nothing of the matter, and they
affected a belief that my father and I had done
the job ourselves in dishonest violation of com-
mercial good faith. Uncle William even
threatened to retaliate by starting an opposi-
tion dance house at Ghost Rock. As The
Saints' Rest' had become rather unpopular, I
saw that this would assuredly ruin it and
prove a paying enterprise, so I told my uncle
that I was willing to overlook the past if he
would take me into the scheme and keep the
partnership a secret from my father. This
fair offer he rejected, and I then perceived
that it would be better and more satisfactory
if he were dead.

"My plans to that end were soon perfected,
and communicating them to my dear parents
I had the gratification of receiving their ap-
proval. My father said he was proud of me,
and my mother promised that although her
religion forbade her to assist in taking human
life I should have the advantage of her prayers
for my success. As a preliminary measure
looking to my security in case of detection I
made an application for membership in that
powerful order, the Knights of Murder, and
in due course was received as a member of the

152 THE COLLECTED WORKS

Ghost Rock commandery. On the day that
my probation ended I was for the first time
permitted to inspect the records of the order
and learn who belonged to it — all the rites of
initiation having been conducted in masks.
Fancy my delight when, in looking over the
roll of membership, I found the third name
to be that of my uncle, who indeed was junior
vice-chancellor of the order! Here was an
opportunity exceeding my wildest dreams — to
murder I could add insubordination and
treachery. It was what my good mother
would have called ^a special Providence.'

"At about this time something occurred
which caused my cup of joy, already full, to
overflow on all sides, a circular cataract of
bliss. Three men, strangers in that locality,
were arrested for the stage robbery in which
I had lost my money and watch. They were
brought to trial and, despite my efforts to clear
them and fasten the guilt upon three of the
most respectable and worthy citizens of Ghost
Rock, convicted on the clearest proof. The
murder would now be as wanton and reason-
less as I could wish.

"One morning I shouldered my Winchester
rifle, and going over to my uncle's house, near
Nigger Head, asked my Aunt Mary, his wife,

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 153

if he were at home, adding that I had come to
kill him. My aunt replied with her peculiar
smile that so many gentleman called on that
errand and were afterward carried away with-
out having performed it that I must excuse
her for doubting my good faith in the matter.
She said I did not look as if I would kill any-
body, so, as a proof of good faith I leveled my
rifle and wounded a Chinaman who happened
to be passing the house. She said she knew
whole families that could do a thing of that
kind, but Bill Ridley was a horse of another
color. She said, however, that I would find
him over on the other side of the creek in the
sheep lot; and she added that she hoped the
best man would win.

"My Aunt Mary was one of the most fair-
minded women that I have ever met.

"I found my uncle down on his knees
engaged in skinning a sheep. Seeing that he
had neither gun nor pistol handy I had not the
heart to shoot him, so I approached him,
greeted him pleasantly and struck him a
powerful blow on the head with the butt of
my rifle. I have a very good delivery and
Uncle William lay down on his side, then
rolled over on his back, spread out his fingers
and shivered. Before he could recover the use

154. THE COLLECTED WORKS

of his limbs I seized the knife that he had been
using and cut his hamstrings. You know,
doubtless, that when you sever the tendo
Achillis the patient has no further use of his
leg; it is just the same as if he had no leg.
Well, I parted them both, and when he revived
he was at my service. As soon as he compre-
hended the situation, he said:

" 'Samuel, you have got the drop on me and
can afford to be generous. I have only one
thing to ask of you, and that is that you carry
me to the house and finish me in the bosom of
my family.'

"I told him I thought that a pretty reason-
able request and I would do so if he would let
me put him into a wheat sack; he would be
easier to carry that way and if we were seen by
the neighbors en route it would cause less
remark. He agreed to that, and going to the
barn I got a sack. This, however, did not fit
him ; it was too short and much wider than he ;
so I bent his legs, forced his knees up against
his breast and got him into it that way, tying
the sack above his head. He was a heavy man
and I had all that I could do to get him on
my back, but I staggered along for some dis-
tance until I came to a swing that some of the
children had suspended to the branch of an

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 155

oak. Here I laid him down and sat upon him
to rest, and the sight of the rope gave me a
happy inspiration. In twenty minutes my
uncle, ^till in the sack, swung free to the sport
of the wind.

"I had taken down the rope, tied one end
tightly about the mouth of the bag, thrown the
other across the limb and hauled him up about
five feet from the ground. Fastening the other
end of the rope also about the mouth of the
sack, I had the satisfaction to see my uncle
converted into a large, fine pendulum. I must
add that he was not himself entirely aware of
the nature of the change that he had undergone
in his relation to the exterior world, though in
justice to a good man's memory I ought to
say that I do not think he would in any case
have wasted much of my time in vain remon-
strance.

"Uncle William had a ram that was famous
in all that region as a fighter. It was in a state
of chronic constitutional indignation. Some
deep disappointment in early Itfe had soured
its disposition and it had declared war upon
the whole world. To say that it would butt
anything accessible is but faintly to express the
nature and scope of its military activity: the
universe was its antagonist; its methods that

156 THE COLLECTED WORKS

of a projectile. It fought like the angels and
devils, in mid-air, cleaving the atmosphere like
a bird, describing a parabolic curve and de-
scending upon its victim at just the exact angle
of incidence to make the most of its velocity
and weight. Its momentum, calculated in
foot-tons, was something incredible. It had
been seen to destroy a four year old bull by a
single impact upon that animal's gnarly fore-
head. No stone wall had ever been known to
resist its downward swoop ; there were no trees
tough enough to stay it; it would splinter them
into matchwood and defile their leafy honors
in the dust. This irascible and implacable
brute — this incarnate thunderbolt — this mon-
ster of the upper deep, I had seen reposing in
the shade of an adjacent tree, dreaming dreams
of conquest and glory. It was with a view to
summoning it forth to the field of honor that
I suspended its master in the manner de-
scribed.

"Having completed my preparations, I im-
parted to the avuncular pendulum a gentle
oscillation, and retiring to cover behind a con-
tiguous rock, lifted up my voice in a long rasp-
ing cry whose diminishing final note was
drowned in a noise like that of a swearing cat,
which emanated from the sack. Instantly that

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 15T

formidable sheep was upon its feet and had
taken in the military situation at a glance. In
a few moments it had approached, stamping,
to within fifty yards of the swinging foeman,
who, now retreating and anon advancing,
seemed to invite the fray. Suddenly I saw the
beast's head drop earthward as if depressed
by the weight of its enormous horns; then a
dim, white, wavy streak of sheep prolonged
itself from that spot in a generally horizontal
direction to within about four yards of a
point immediately beneath the enemy. There
it struck sharply upward, and before it had
faded from my gaze at the place whence it
had set out I heard a horrid thump and a
piercing scream, and my poor uncle shot for-
ward, with a slack rope higher than the limb
to which he was attached. Here the rope
tautened with a jerk, arresting his flight,
and back he swung in a breathless curve to
the other end of his arc. The ram had fallen,
a heap of indistinguishable legs, wool and
horns, but pulling itself together and dodg-
ing as its antagonist swept downward it retired
at random, alternately shaking its head and
stamping its fore-feet. When it had backed
about the same distance as that from which
it had delivered the assault it paused again,

158 THE COLLECTED WORKS

bowed its head as if in prayer for victory and
again shot forward, dimly visible as before —
a prolonging white streak with monstrous un-
dulations, ending with a sharp ascension. Its
course this time was at a right angle to its
former one, and its impatience so great that
it struck the enemy before he had nearly
reached the lowest point of his arc. In con-
sequence he went flying round and round in
a horizontal circle whose radius was about
equal to half the length of the rope, which I
forgot to say was nearly twenty feet long. His
shrieks, crescendo in approach and diminu-
endo in recession, made the rapidity of his
revolution more obvious to the ear than to the
eye. He had evidently not yet been struck
in a vital spot. His posture in the sack and
the distance from the ground at which he
hung compelled the ram to operate upon his
lower extremities and the end of his back.
Like a plant that has struck its root into some
poisonous mineral, my poor uncle was dying
slowly upward.

"After delivering its second blow the ram
had not again retired. The fever of battle
burned hot in its heart; its brain was intoxic-
ated with* the wine of strife. Like a pugilist
who in his rage forgets his skill and fights

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 159

ineffectively at half-arm's length, the angry
beast endeavored to reach its fleeting foe by
awkward vertical leaps as he passed over-
head, sometimes, indeed, succeeding in strik-
ing him feebly, but more frequently over-
thrown by its own misguided eagerness. But
as the impetus was exhausted and the man's
circles narrowed in scope and diminished in
speed, bringing him nearer to the ground,
these tactics produced better results, eliciting
a superior quality of screams, which I greatly
enjoyed.

"Suddenly, as if the bugles had sung truce,
the ram suspended hostilities and walked
away, thoughtfully wrinkling and smoothing
its great aquiline nose, and occasionally cropp-
ing a bunch of grass and slowly munching
it. It seemed to have tired of war's alarms
and resolved to beat the sword into a plow-
share and cultivate the arts of peace. Steadily
it held its course away from the field of fame
until it had gained a distance of nearly a quar-
ter of a mile. There it stopped and stood
with its rear to the foe, chewing its cud and
apparently half asleep. I observed, however,
an occasional slight turn of its head, as if its
apathy were more affected than real.

"Meantime Uncle William's shrieks had

160 THE COLLECTED WORKS

abated with his motion, and nothing was
heard from him but long, low moans, and
at long intervals my name, uttered in plead-
ing tones exceedingly grateful to my ear.
Evidently the man had not the faintest notion
of what was being done to him, and was in-
expressibly terrified. When Death comes
cloaked in mystery he is terrible indeed. Lit-
tle by little my uncle's oscillations diminished,
and finally he hung motionless. I went to
him and was about to give him the coup de
grdce^ when I heard and felt a succession of
smart shocks which shook the ground like a
series of light earthquakes, and turning in the
direction of the ram, saw a long cloud of dust
approaching me with inconceivable rapidity
and alarming effect! At a distance of some
thirty yards away it stopped short, and from
the near end of it rose into the air what I
at first thought a great white bird. Its ascent
was so smooth and easy and regular that I
could not realize its extraordinary celerity,
and was lost in admiration of its grace. To
this day the impression remains that it was a
slow, deliberate movement, the ram — for it
was that animal — being upborne by some
power other than its own impetus, and sup-
ported through the successive stages of its

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 161

flight with infinite tenderness and care. My
eyes followed its progress through the air
with unspeakable pleasure, all the greater by
contrast with my former terror of its approach
by land. Onward and upward the noble ani-
mal sailed, its head bent down almost between
its knees, its fore-feet thrown back, its hinder
legs trailing to rear like the legs of a soaring
heron.

"At a height of forty or fifty feet, as
fond recollection presents it to view, it at-
tained its zenith and appeared to remain an
instant stationary; then, tilting suddenly for-
ward without altering the relative position of
its parts, it shot downward on a steeper and
steeper course with augmenting velocity,
passed immediately above me with a noise
like the rush of a cannon shot and struck my
poor uncle almost squarely on the top of
the head! So frightful was the impact that
not only the man's neck was broken, but the
rope too ; and the body of the deceased, forced
against the earth, was crushed to pulp beneath
the awful front of that meteoric sheep ! The
concussion stopped all the clocks between
Lone Hand and Dutch Dan's, and Professor
Davidson, a distinguished authority in mat-
ters seismic, who happened to be in the vicin-

162 THE COLLECTED WORKS

ity, promptly explained that the vibrations
were from north to southwest.

"Altogether, I cannot help thinking that in
point of artistic atrocity my murder of Uncle
William has seldom been excelled."

QF AMBROSE BIERCE 163

OIL OF DOG

MY name is Boffer Bings. I was
bom of honest parents in one of
the humbler walks of life, my
father being a manufacturer of
dog-oil and my mother having a small studio
in the shadow of the village church, where she
disposed of unwelcome babes. In my boy-
hood I was trained to habits of industry; I
not only assisted my father in procuring dogs
for his vats, but was frequently employed by
my mother to carry away the debris of her
work in the studio. In performance of this
duty I sometimes had need of all my natural
intelligence for all the law ofHcers of the
vicinity were opposed to my mother's business.
They were not elected on an opposition ticket,
and the matter had never been made a polit-
ical issue; it just happened so. My father's
business of making dog-oil was, naturally, less
unpopular, though the owners of missing dogs
sometimes regarded him with suspicion, which
was reflected, to some extent, upon me. My

164 THE COLLECTED WORKS

father had, as silent partners, all the physicians
of the town, who seldom wrote a prescrip-
tion which did not contain what they were
pleased to designate as 01. can. It is really
the most valuable medicine ever discovered.
But most persons are unwilling to make per-
sonal sacrifices for the afflicted, and it was
evident that many of the fattest dogs in town
had been forbidden to play with me — a fact
which pained my young sensibilities, and at
one time came near driving me to become a
pirate.

Looking back upon those days, I cannot
but regret, at times, that by indirectly bring-
ing my beloved parents to their death I was
the author of misfortunes profoundly affect-
ing my future.

One evening while passing my father's oil
factory with the body of a foundling from my
mother's studio I saw a constable who seemed
to be closely watching my movements. Young
as I was, I had learned that a constable's acts,
of whatever apparent character, are prompted
by the most reprehensible motives, and I
avoided him by dodging into the oilery by a
side door which happened to stand ajar. I
locked it at once and was alone with my dead.
My father had retired for the night. The

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 165

only light in the place came from the furnace,
which glowed a deep, rich crimson under one
of the vats, casting ruddy reflections on the
walls. Within the cauldron the oil still rolled
in indolent ebullition, occasionally pushing to
the surface a piece of dog. Seating myself to
wait for the constable to go away, I held the
naked body of the foundling in my lap and
tenderly stroked its short, silken hair. Ah,
how beautiful it was ! Even at that early age
I was passionately fond of children, and as I
looked upon this cherub I could almost find
it in my heart to wish that the small, red
wound upon its breast — the work of my dear
mother — had not been mortal.

It had been my custom to throw the babes
into the river which nature had thoughtfully
provided for the purpose, but that night I did
not dare to leave the oilery for fear of the
constable. "After all," I said to myself, "it
cannot greatly matter if I put it into this
cauldron. My father will never know the
bones from those of a puppy, and the few
deaths which may result from administering
another kind of oil for the incomparable oL
can. are not important in a population which
increases so rapidly." In short, I took the
first step in crime and brought myself untold

166 THE COLLECTED WORKS

sorrow by casting the babe into the cauldron.
The next day, somewhat to my surprise, my
father, rubbing his hands with satisfaction,
informed me and my mother that he had
obtained the finest quality of oil that was
ever seen ; that the physicians to whom he had
shown samples had so pronounced it. He
added that he had no knowledge as to how the
result was obtained; the dogs had been treated
in all respects as usual, and were of an ordin-
ary breed. I deemed it my duty to explain — •
which I did, though palsied would have been
my tongue if I could have foreseen the con-
sequences. Bewailing their previous ignor-
ance of the advantages of combining their
industries, my parents at once took measures
to repair the error. My mother removed her
studio to a wing of the factory building and
my duties in connection with the business
ceased; I was no longer required to dispose of
the bodies of the small superfluous, and there
was no need of alluring dogs to their doom,
for my father discarded them altogether,
though they still had an honorable place in
the name of the oil. So suddenly thrown into
idleness, I might naturally have been expected
to become vicious and dissolute, but I did
not. The holy influence of my dear mother

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 167

was ever about me to protect me from the
temptations which beset youth, and my father
was a deacon in a church. Alas, that through
my fault these estimable persons should have
come to so bad an end!

Finding a double profit in her business, my
mother now devoted herself to it with a new
assiduity. She removed not only superfluous
and unwelcome babes to order, but went out
into the highways and b5rways, gathering in
children of a larger growth, and even such
adults as she could entice to the oilery. My
father, too, enamored of the superior quality
of oil produced, purveyed for his vats with
diligence and zeal. The conversion of their
neighbors into dog-oil became, in short, the
one passion of their lives — an absorbing and
overwhelming greed took possession of their
souls and served them in place of a hope in
Heaven — by which, also, they were inspired.

So enterprising had they now become that
a public meeting was held and resolutions
passed severely censuring them. It was
intimated by the chairman that any further
raids upon the population would be met in a
spirit of hostility. My poor parents left the
meeting broken-hearted, desperate and, I be-
lieve, not altogether sane. Anyhow, I deemed

168 THE COLLECTED WORKS

it prudent not to enter the oilery with them
that night, but slept outside in a stable.

At about midnight some mysterious im-
pulse caused me to rise and peer through a
window into the furnace-room, where I knew
my father now slept. The fires were burning
as brightly as if the following day's harvest
had been expected to be abundant. One of
the large cauldrons was slowly "walloping"
with a mysterious appearance of self-restraint,
as if it bided its time to put forth its full
energy. My father was not in bed; he had
risen in his nightclothes and was preparing
a noose in a strong cord. From the looks
which he cast at the door of my mother's bed-
room I knew too well the purpose that he had
in mind. Speechless and motionless with
terror, I could do nothing in prevention or
warning. Suddenly the door of my mother's
apartment was opened, noiselessly, and the
two confronted each other, both apparently
surprised. The lady, also, was in her night
clothes, and she held in her right hand the
tool of her trade, a long, narrow-bladed dag-
ger.

She, too, had been unable to deny her-
self the last profit which the unfriendly action
of the citizens and my absence had left her.

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 169

For one instant they looked into each other's
blazing eyes and then sprang together with
indescribable fury. Round and round the room
they struggled, the man cursing, the woman
shrieking, both fighting like demons — she to
strike him with the dagger, he to strangle her
with his great bare hands. I know not how
long I had the unhappiness to observe this
disagreeable instance of domestic infelicity,
but at last, after a more than usually vigorous
struggle, the combatants suddenly moved
apart.

My father's breast and my mother's
weapon showed evidences of contact. For
another instant they glared at each other in
the most unamiable way; then my poor,
wounded father, feeling the hand of death
upon him, leaped forward, unmindful of re-
sistance, grasped my dear mother in his arms,
dragged her to the side of the boiling cauld-
ron, collected all his failing energies, and
sprang in with her! In a moment, both had
disappeared and were adding their oil to that
of the committee of citizens who had called
the day before with an invitation to the public
meeting.

Convinced that these unhappy events closed
to me every avenue to an honorable career in

170 THE COLLECTED WORKS

that town, I removed to the famous city of
Otumwee, where these memoirs are written
with a heart full of remorse for a heedless act
entailing so dismal a commercial disaster.

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 171

AN IMPERFECT CONFLAGRATION

EARLY one June morning in 1872 I
murdered my father — an act which
made a deep impression on me at
the time. This was before my
marriage, while I was living with my parents
in Wisconsin. My father and I were in the
library of our home, dividing the proceeds of
a burglary which we had committed that
night. These consisted of household goods
mostly, and the task of equitable division was
difficult. We got on very well with the nap-
kins, towels and such things, and the silver-
ware was parted pretty nearly equally, but
you can see for yourself that when you try to
divide a single music-box by two without a
remainder you will have trouble. It was that
music-box which brought disaster and dis-
grace upon our family. If we had left it my
poor father might now be alive.

It was a most exquisite and beautiful piece
of workmanship — inlaid with costly woods
and carven very curiously. It would not only

172 THE COLLECTED WORKS

play a great variety of tunes, but would whistle
like a quail, bark like a dog, crow every morn-
ing at daylight whether it was wound up or
not, and break the Ten Commandments. It
was this last mentioned accomplishment that
won my father's heart and caused him to com-
mit the only dishonorable act of his life,
though possibly he would have committed
more if he had been spared: he tried to con-
ceal that music-box from me, and declared
upon his honor that he had not taken it,
though I knew very well that, so far as he was
concerned, the burglary had been undertaken
chiefly for the purpose of obtaining it.

My father had the music-box hidden under
his cloak; we had worn cloaks by way of dis-
guise. He had solemnly assured me that he
did not take it. I knew that he did, and knew
something of which he was evidently ignor-
ant; namely, that the box would crow at day-
light and betray him if I could prolong the
division of profits till that time. All occurred
as I wished: as the gaslight began to pale in
the library and the shape of the windows was
seen dimly behind the curtains, a long cock-a-
doodle-doo came from beneath the old gentle-
man's cloak, followed by a few bars of an aria
from Tannhauser, ending with a loud click.

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 173

A small hand-axe, which we had used to break
into the unlucky house, lay between us on the
table; I picked it up. The old man seeing
that further concealment was useless took the
box from under his cloak and set it on the
table. "Cut it in two if you prefer that plan,"
said he; "I tried to save it from destruction."

He was a passionate lover of music and
could himself play the concertina with expres-
sion and feeling.

I said: "I do not question the purity of your
motive: it would be presumptuous in me to
sit in judgment on my father. But business
is business, and with this axe I am going to
effect a dissolution of our partnership unless
you will consent in all future burglaries to
wear a bell-punch."

"No," he said, after some reflection, "no, I
could not do that; it would look like a con-
fession of dishonesty. People would say that
you distrusted me."

I could not help admiring his spirit and
sensitiveness; for a moment I was proud of
him and disposed to overlook his fault, but a
glance at the richly jeweled music-box
decided me, and, as I said, I removed the old
man from this vale of tears. Having done
so, I was a trifle uneasy. Not only was he my

174 THE COLLECTED WORKS

father — the author of my being — but the body
would be certainly discovered. It was now
broad daylight and my mother was likely to
enter the library at any moment. Under the
circumstances, I thought it expedient to
remove her also, which I did. Then I paid
off all the servants and discharged them.

That afternoon I went to the chief of
police, told him what I had done and asked
his advice. It would be very painful to me
if the facts became publicly known. My con-
duct would be generally condemned; the
newspapers would bring it up against me if
ever I should run for office. The chief saw
the force of these considerations; he was him-
self an assassin of wide experience. After
consulting with the presiding judge of the
Court of Variable Jurisdiction he advised me
to conceal the bodies in one of the bookcases,
get a heavy insurance on the house and burn
it down. This I proceeded to do.

In the library was a book-case which my
father had recently purchased of some cranky
inventor and had not filled. It was in shape and
size something like the old-fashioned "ward-
robes" which one sees in bed-rooms without
closets, but opened all the way down, like a
woman's night-dress. It had glass doors. I

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 175

had recently laid out my parents and they
were now rigid enough to stand erect; so I
stood them in this book-case, from which I
had removed the shelves. I locked them in
and tacked some curtains over the glass doors.
The inspector from the insurance office passed
a half-dozen times before the case without
suspicion.

That night, after getting my policy, I set
fire to the house and started through the
woods to town, two miles away, where I man-
aged to be found about the time the excitement
was at its height. With cries of apprehension
for the fate of my parents, I joined the rush
and arrived at the fire some two hours after I
had kindled it. The whole town was there
as I dashed up. The house was entirely con-
sumed, but in one end of the level bed of glow-
ing embers, bolt upright and uninjured, was
that book-case! The curtains had burned
away, exposing the glass-doors, through which
the fierce, red light illuminated the interior.
There stood my dear father "in his habit as
he lived," and at his side the partner of his
joys and sorrows. Not a hair of them was
singed, their clothing was intact. On their
heads and throats the injuries which in the
accomplishment of my designs I had beea

176 THE COLLECTED WORKS

compelled to inflict were conspicuous. As in
the presence of a miracle, the people were
silent; awe and terror had stilled every tongue.
I was myself greatly affected.

Some three years later, when the events
herein related had nearly faded from my
memory, I went to New York to assist in pass-
ing some counterfeit United States bonds.
Carelessly looking into a furniture store one
day, I saw the exact counterpart of that book-
case. "I bought it for a trifle from a reformed
inventor," the dealer explained. "He said it
was fireproof, the pores of the wood being
filled with alum under hydraulic pressure and
the glass made of asbestos. I don't suppose it
is really fireproof — you can have it at the
price of an ordinary book-case."

"No," I said, "if you cannot warrant it fire-
proof I won't take it" — and I bade him good
morning.

I would not have had it at any price: it
revived memories th^t were exceedingly dis-
agreeable,

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 177

THE HYPNOTIST

BY those of my friends who happen to
know that I sometimes amuse myself
with hypnotism, mind reading and
kindred phenomena, I am frequently
asked if I have a clear conception of
the nature of whatever principle under-
lies them. To this question I always reply
that I neither have nor desire to have. I am
no investigator with an ear at the key-hole
of Nature's workshop, trying with vulgar
curiosity to steal the secrets of her trade. The
interests of science are as little to me as mine
seem to have been to science.

Doubtless the phenomena in question are
simple enough, and in no way transcend our
powers of comprehension if only we could
find the clew; but for my part I prefer not to
find it, for I am of a singularly romantic dis-
position, deriving more gratification from
mystery than from knowledge. It was com-
monly remarked of me when I was a child
that my big blue eyes appeared to have been
made rather to look into than look out of — -

178 THE COLLECTED WORKS

such was their dreamful beauty, and in my
frequent periods of abstraction, their indif-
ference to what was going on. In those
peculiarities they resembled, I venture to
think, the soul which lies behind them, always
more intent upon some lovely conception
which it has created in its own image than con-
cerned about the laws of nature and the
material frame of things. All this, irrelevant
and egotistic as it may seem, is related by way
of accounting for the meagreness of the light
that I am able to throw upon a subject that
has engaged so much of my attention, and con-
cerning which there is so keen and general a
curiosity. With my powers and opportunities,
another person might doubtless have an ex-
planation for much of what I present simply
as narrative.

My first knowledge that I possessed unusual
powers came to me in my fourteenth year,
when at school. Happening one day to have
forgotten to bring my noon-day luncheon, I
gazed longingly at that of a small girl who
was preparing to eat hers. Looking up, her
eyes met mine and she seemed unable to with-
draw them. After a moment of hesitancy she
came forward in an absent kind of way and
without a word surrendered her little basket

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 179

with its tempting contents and walked away.
Inexpressibly pleased, I relieved my hunger
and destroyed the basket. After that I had
not the trouble to bring a luncheon for my-
self: that little girl was my daily purveyor;
and not infrequently in satisfying my simple
need from her frugal store I combined pleas-
ure and profit by constraining her attendance
at the feast and making misleading proffer of
the viands, which eventually I consumed to
the last fragment. The girl was always per-
suaded that she had eaten all herself; and
later in the day her tearful complaints of
hunger surprised the teacher, entertained the
pupils, earned for her the sobriquet of
Greedy-Gut and filled me with a peace past
understanding.

A disagreeable feature of this otherwise
satisfactory condition of things was the neces-
sary secrecy: the transfer of the luncheon, for
example, had to be made at some distance
from the madding crowd, in a wood; and I
blush to think of the many other unworthy
subterfuges entailed by the situation. As I
was (and am) naturally of a frank and open
disposition, these became more and more irk-
some, and but for the reluctance of my par-
ents to renounce the obvious advantages of the

180 THE COLLECTED WORKS

new regime I would gladly have reverted to
the old. The plan that I finally adopted to
free myself from the consequences of my own
powers excited a wide and keen interest at the
time, and that part of it which consisted
in the death of the girl was severely con-
demned, but it is hardly pertinent to the scope
of this narrative.

For some years afterward I had little oppor-
tunity to practice hypnotism; such small essays
as I made at it were commonly barren of other
recognition than solitary confinement on a
bread-and- water diet; sometimes, indeed, they
elicited nothing better than the cat-o'-nine-
tails. It was when I was about to leave the
scene of these small disappointments that my
one really important feat was performed.

I had been called into the warden's ofBce
and given a suit of civilian's clothing, a trifling
sum of money and a great deal of advice,
which I am bound to confess was of a much
better quality than the clothing. As I was pass-
ing out of the gate into the light of freedom
I suddenly turned and looking the warden
gravely in the eye, soon had him in control.

"You are an ostrich," I said.

At the post-mortem examination the
stomach was found to contain a great quantity

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 181

of indigestible articles mostly of wood or
metal. Stuck fast in the oesophagus and con-
stituting, according to the Coroner's jury, the
immediate cause of death, one door-knob.

I was by nature a good and affectionate son,
but as I took my way into the great world
from which I had been so long secluded I
could not help remembering that all my mis-
fortunes had flowed like a stream from the nig-
gard economy of my parents in the matter of
school luncheons ; and I knew of no reason to
think they had reformed.

On the road between Succotash Hill and
South Asphyxia is a little open field which once
contained a shanty known as Pete Gilstrap's
Place, where that gentleman used to murder
travelers for a living. The death of Mr. Gil-
strap and the diversion of nearly all the travel
to another road occurred so nearly at the same
time that no one has ever been able to say
which was cause and which effect. Anyhow,
the field was now a desolation and the Place
had long been burned. It was while going
afoot to South Asphyxia, the home of my
childhood, that I found both my parents on
their way to the Hill. They had hitched their
team and were eating luncheon under an oak
tree in the center of the field. The sight of the

182 THE COLLECTED WORKS

luncheon called up painful memories of my
school days and roused the sleeping lion in my
breast. Approaching the guilty couple, who
at once recognized me, I ventured to suggest
that I share their hospitality.

"Of this cheer, my son," said the author of
my being, with characteristic pomposity,
which age had not withered, "there is suffic-
ient for but two. I am not, I hope, insens-
ible to the hunger-light in your eyes, but — "

My father has never completed that sent-
ence; what he mistook for hunger-light was
simply the earnest gaze of the hypnotist. In
a few seconds he was at my service. A few
more sufficed for the lady, and the dictates of
a just resentment could be carried into efifect.
"My former father," I said, "I presume that
it is known to you that you and this lady are
no longer what you were?"

"I have observed a certain subtle change,"
was the rather dubious reply of the old gentle-
man; "it is perhaps attributable to age."

"It is more than that," I explained; "it goes
to character — to species. You and the lady
here are, in truth, two broncos — ^wild stallions
both, and unfriendly."

"Why, John," exclaimed my dear mother,
"you don't mean to say that I am — "

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 183

"Madam," I replied, solemnly, fixing my
eyes again upon hers, "you are."

Scarcely had the words fallen from my lips
when she dropped upon her hands and knees,
and backing up to the old man squealed like
a demon and delivered a vicious kick upon
his shin! An instant later he was himself
down on all-fours, headed away from her and
flinging his feet at her simultaneously and
successively. With equal earnestness but
inferior agility, because of her hampering
body-gear, she plied her own. Their flying
legs crossed and mingled in the most bewilder-
ing way; their feet sometimes meeting squarely
in midair, their bodies thrust forward,
falling flat upon the ground and for a moment
helpless. On recovering themselves they
would resume the combat, uttering their
frenzy in the nameless sounds of the furious
brutes which they believed themselves to be —
the whole region rang with their clamor I
Round and round they wheeled, the blows of
their feet falling "like lightnings from the
mountain cloud." They plunged and reared
backward upon their knees, struck savagely at
each other with awkward descending blows
of both fists at once, and dropped again upon
their hands as if unable to maintain the upright

184 BIERCE'S COLLECTED WORKS

position of the body. Grass and pebbles were
torn from the soil by hands and feet; clothing,
hair, faces inexpressibly defiled with dust and
blood. Wild, inarticulate screams of rage
attested the delivery of the blows; groans,
grunts and gasps their receipt. Nothing more
truly military was ever seen at Gettysburg or
Waterloo: the valor of my dear parents in the
hour of danger can never cease to be to me a
source of pride and gratification. At the end
of it all two battered, tattered, bloody and
fragmentary vestiges of mortality attested the
solemn fact that the author of the strife was
an orphan.

Arrested for provoking a breach of the
peace, I was, and have ever since been, tried
in the Court of Technicalities and Continu-
ances whence, after fifteen years of proceed-
ings, my attorney is moving heaven and earth
to get the case taken to the Court of Remand-
ment for New Trials.

Such are a few of my principal experiments
in the mysterious force or agency known as
hypnotic suggestion. Whether or not it could
be employed by a bad man for an unworthy
purpose I am unable to say.

THE FOURTH ESTATE

MR. MASTHEAD, JOURNALIST

WHILE I was in Kansas I pur-
chased a weekly newspaper — the
Claybank Thundergust of Re-
form. This paper had never paid
its expenses; it had ruined four consecut-
ive publishers; but my brother-in-law, Mr.
Jefferson Scandril, of Weedhaven, was going
to run for the Legislature, and I naturally de-
sired his defeat; so it became necessary to have
an organ in Claybank to assist in his political
extinction. When the establishment came into
my hands, the editor was a fellow who had
"opinions," and him I at once discharged with
an admonition. I had some difficulty in pro-
curing a successor; every man in the county
applied for the place. I could not appoint
one without having to fight a majority of the
others, and was eventually compelled to write
to a friend at Warm Springs, in the adjoining
State of Missouri, to send me an editor from
abroad whose instalment at the helm of mani-
fest destiny could have no local significance.
The man he sent me was a frowsy, seedy fel^^

188 THE COLLECTED WORKS

low, named Masthead — not larger, apparently,
than a boy of sixteen years, though it was diffi-
cult to say from the outside how much of him
was editor and how much cast-off clothing;
for in the matter of apparel he had acted upon
his favorite professional maxim, and "sunk the
individual ;" his attire — eminently eclectic,
and in a sense international — quite overcame
him at all points. However, as my friend had
assured me he was "a graduate of one of the
largest institutions in his native State," I took
him in and bought a pen for him. My instruc-
tions to him were brief and simple.

"Mr. Masthead," said I, "it is the policy of
the Thundergust first, last, and all the time, in
this world and the next, to resent the intrusion
of Mr. Jefferson Scandril into politics."

The first thing the little rascal did was to
write a withering leader denouncing Mr.
Scandril as a "demagogue, the degradation of
whose political opinions was only equaled by
the disgustfulness of the family connections of
which those opinions were the spawn!"

I hastened to point out to Mr. Masthead
that it had never been the policy of the
Thundergust to attack the family relations of
an offensive candidate, although this was not
strictly true.

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 189

"I am very sorry," he replied, running his
head up out of his clothes till it towered as
much as six inches above the table at which he
sat; "no offense, I hope."

"Oh, none in the world," said I, as carelessly
as I could manage it; "only I don't think it a
legitimate — that is, an effective, method of
attack."

"Mr. Johnson," said he — I was passing as
Johnson at that time, I remember — "Mr.
Johnson, I think it is an effective method. Per-
sonally I might perhaps prefer another line of
argument in this particular case, and person-
ally perhaps you might; but in our profession
personal considerations must be blown to the
winds of the horizon; we must sink the
individual. In opposing the election of your
relative, sir, you have set the seal of your heavy
displeasure upon the sin of nepotism, and for
this I respect you; nepotism must be got
under! But in the display of Roman virtues,
sir, we must go the whole hog. When in the
interest of public morality" — Mr. Masthead
was now gesticulating earnestly with the
sleeves of his coat — "Virginius stabbed his
daughter, was he influenced by personal con-
siderations? When Curtius leaped into the
yawning gulf, did he not sink the individual?"

190 THE COLLECTED WORKS

r admitted that he did, but feeling in a con-
tentious mood, prolonged the discussion by
leisurely loading and capping a revolver; but,
prescient of my argument, Mr. Masthead
avoided refutation by hastily adjourning the
debate. I sent him a note that evening, fill-
ing-in a few of the details of the policy that
I had before sketched in outline. Amongst
other things I submitted that it would be bet-
ter for us to exalt Mr. Scandril's opponent
than to degrade himself. To this Mr. Mast-
head reluctantly assented — "sinking the indi-
vidual," he reproachfully explained, "in the
dependent employee — the powerless bonds-
man!" The next issue of the Thundergust
contained, under the heading, "Invigorating
Zephyrs," the following editorial article:

"Last week we declared our unalterable
opposition to the candidacy of Mr. Jefferson
Scandril, and gave reasons for the faith that
is in us. For the first time in its history this
paper made a clear, thoughtful, and adequate
avowal and exposition of eternal principle!
Abandoning for the present the stand we then
took, let us trace the antecedents of Mr. Scand-
ril's opponent up to their source. It has been
urged against Mr. Broskin that he spent some
year§ qi jiis life in the lunatic asylum at Warm

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 191

Springs, in the adjoining commonwealth of
Missouri. This cuckoo cry — raised though it
is by dogs of political darkness — we shall not
stoop to controvert, for it is accidentally true;
but next week we shall show, as by the stroke
of an enchanter's wand, that this great states-
man's detractors would probably not derive
any benefits from a residence in the same insti-
tution, their mental aberration being rottenly
incurable!"

I thought this rather strong and not quite
to the point; but Masthead said it was a fact
that our candidate, who was very little known
in Claybank, had "served a term" in the Warm
Springs asylum, and the issue must be boldly
met — that evasion and denial were but forms
of prostration beneath the iron wheels of
Truth! As he said this he seemed to inflate
and expand so as almost to fill his clothes, and
the fire of his eye somehow burned into me an
impression — since effaced — that a just cause is
not imperiled by a trifling concession to fact.
So, leaving the matter quite in my editor's
hands I went away to keep some important
engagements, the paragraph having involved
me in several duels with the friends of Mr.
Broskin. I thought it rather hard that I should
have to defend my new editor's policy against

192 THE COLLECTED WORKS

the supporters of my own candidate, particul-
arly as I was clearly in the right and they
knew nothing whatever about the matter in
dispute, not one of them having ever before so
much as heard of the now famous Warm
Springs asylum. But I would not shirk even the
humblest journalistic duty; I fought these fel-
lows and acquitted myself as became a man of
letters and a politician. The hurts I got were
some time healing, and in the interval every
prominent member of my party who came to
Claybank to speak to the people regarded it
as a simple duty to call first at my house, make
a tender inquiry as to the progress of my recov-
ery and leave a challenge. My physician for-
bade me to read a line of anything; the con-
sequence was that Masthead had it all his own
way with the paper. In looking over the old
files now, I find that he devoted his entire
talent and all the space of the paper, includ-
ing what had been the advertising columns,
to confessing that our candidate had been an
inmate of a lunatic asylum, and contemptu-
ously asking the opposing party what they
were going to do about it.

All this time Mr. Broskin made no sign;
but when the challenges became intolerable
I indignantly instructed Mr. Masthead to

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 193

whip round to the other side and support my
brother-in-law. Masthead "sank the individ-
ual," and duly announced, with his accus-
tomed frankness, our change of policy. Then
Mr. Broskin came down to Claybank — to
thank me! He was a fine, respectable-looking
gentleman, and impressed me very favorably.
But Masthead was in when he called, and the
effect upon him was different. He shrank
into a mere heap of old clothes, turned white,
and chattered his teeth. Noting this extra-
ordinary behavior, I at once sought an explan-
ation.

"Mr. Broskin," said I, with a meaning
glance at the trembling editor, "from certain
indications I am led to fear that owing to some
mistake we may have been doing you an
injustice. May I ask you if you were really
ever in the Lunatic asylum at Warm Springs,
Missouri?"

"For three years," he replied, quietly, "I
was the physician in charge of that institution.
Your son" — turning to Masthead, who was
flying all sorts of colors — "was, if I mistake
not, one of my patients. I learn that a few
weeks ago a friend of yours, named Norton,
secured the young man's release upon your
promise to take care of him yourself in future.

194. THE COLLECTED WORKS

I hope that home associations have improved
the poor fellow. It's very sad !"

It was indeed. Norton was the name of the
man to whom I had written for an editor, and
who had sent me onel Norton was ever an
obliging fellow.

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 195

WHY I AM NOT EDITING "THE
STINGER'^

J. Munniglut, Proprietor, to Peter Pitchin,
Editor,

"Stinger" Office, Monday, 9 a. m.

A MAN has called to ask "who wrote
that article about Mr. Muskier." I
told him to find out, and he says
that is what he means to do. He
has consented to amuse himself with the ex-
changes while I ask you. I don't approve the
article.

Peter Pitchin, Editor, to /. Munniglut, Pro-
prietor,

13 LoFER Street, Monday, 10 A. m.

Do you happen to remember how Dacier
translates Difficile est proprie communia dic-
ere? IVe made a note of it somewhere, but
can't find it. If you remember please leave a
memorandum of it on your table, and FU get
it when I come down this afternoon.

P.S. — Tell the man to go away; we can't
be bothered about that fellow Muskier.

196 THE COLLECTED WORKS

/. Munniglut, Proprietor, to Peter Pitchin,
Editor.

"Stinger" Office, Monday, 1 1 :3o A. m.

I can't be impolite to a stranger, you know;
I must tell him somebody wrote it. He has
finished the exchanges, and is drumming on
the floor with the end of his stick; I fear the
people in the shop below won't like it. Be-
sides, the foreman says it disturbs the com-
positors in the next room. Suppose you come
down.

Peter Pitchin, Editor, to J. Munniglut, Pro-
prietor.

13 LoFER Street, Monday, i P. M.

I have found the note I made of that trans-
lation, but it is in French and I can't make it
out. Try the man with the dictionary and the
"Books of Dates." They ought to last him
till it's time to close the ofBce. I shall be
down early to-morrow morning.

P.S. — How big is he? Suggest a civil suit
for libel.

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 197

/. Munniglut, Proprietor, to Peter Pitchin,
Editor.

"Stinger" Office, Monday, 3 p. m.

He looks larger than he was when he came
in. I've offered him the dictionary; he says
he has read it before. He is sitting on my
table. Come at once!

Peter Pitchin, Editor, to /. Munniglut, Pro-
prietor,

13 LoFER Street, Monday, 5 p. m.

I don't think I shall. I am doing an article
for this week on "The Present Aspect of the
Political Horizon." Expect me very early
to-morrow. You had better turn the man out
and shut up the office.

Henry Inxling, Bookkeeper, to Peter Pitchin,
Editor,

"Stinger" Office, Tuesday, 8 A. M.

Mr. Munniglut has not arrived, but his
friend, the large gentleman who was with him
all day yesterday, is here again. He seems

198 THE COLLECTED WORKS

very desirous of seeing you, and says he will
wait. Perhaps he is your cousin. I thought
I would tell you he was here, so that you
might hasten down.

Ought I to allow dogs in the office? The
gentleman has a bull-dog.

Peter Pitchin, Editor, to Henry Inxling,
Bookkeeper,

13 LoFER Street, Tuesday, 9.30 a. m.

Certainly not; dogs have fleas. The man is
an impostor. Oblige me by turning him out.
I shall come down this afternoon — early.

P.S. — Don't listen to the rascal's entreaties;
out with himl

Henry Inxling, Bookkeeper, to Peter Pitchin,
Editor,

"Stinger" Office, Tuesday, 12 m.
The gentleman carries a revolver. Would
you mind coming down and reasoning with
him? I have a wife and five children depend-
ing on me, and when I lose my temper 1 am
likely to go too far. I would prefer that you
should turn him out.

^ OF AMBROSE BIERCE 199

Peter Pitchin, Editor, to Henry Inxling,
Bookkeeper,

13 LoFER Street, Tuesday, 2 p. m.
Do you suppose I can leave my private
correspondence to preserve you from the
intrusion and importunities of beggars? Put
the scoundrel out at once — neck and heels! I
know him; he's Muskier — don't you remem-
ber? Muskier, the coward, who assaulted an
old man; you'll find the whole circumstances
related in last Saturday's issue. Out with him
— the unmanly sneak 1

Henry Inxling, Bookkeeper, to Peter Pitchin,
Editor.

"Stinger" Office, Tuesday Evening.

I have told him to go, and he laughed. So
did the bull-dog. But he is going. He is
now making a bed for the pup in one corner
of your room, with some rugs and old news-
papers, and appears to be about to go to din-
ner. I have given him your address. The
foreman wants some copy to go on with. I
beg you will come at once if I am to be left
alone with that dog.

200 THE COLLECTED WORKS

Peter Pitchin, Editor, to Henry Inxling,
Bookkeeper.

40 Duntioner's Alley, Wednesday, 10 A. M.

I should have come down to the office last
evening, but you see I have been moving. My
landlady was too filthy dirty for anything! I
stood it as long as I could; then I left. I'm
coming directly I get your answer to this ; but
I want to know, first, if my blotter has been
changed and my ink-well refilled. This
house is a good way out, but the boy can take
the car at the corner of Cobble and Slush
streets.

O! — about that man? Of course you have
not seen him since.

William Quoin, Foreman, to Peter Pitchin,
Editor,

"Stinger" Office, Wednesday, 12 M.
I've got your note to Inxling; he ain't come
down this morning. I haven't a line of copy
on the hooks; the boys are all throwing in
dead ads. There's a man and a dog in the
proprietor's office; I don't believe they ought
to be there, all alone, but they were here all

^ OF AMBROSE BIERCE 201

Monday and yesterday, and may be connected
with the business management of the paper;
so I don't like to order them out. Perhaps
you will come down and speak to them. We
shall have to go away if you don't send copy.

Peter Pitchin, Editor, to William Quoin,
Foreman,

40 Duntioner's Alley, Wednesday, 3 p. M.

Your note astonishes me. The man you
describe is a notorious thief. Get the com-
positors all together, and make a rush at him.
Don't try to keep him, but hustle him out of
town, and I'll be down as soon as I can get
a button sewn on my collar.

P.S. — Give it him good! — don't mention
my address and he can't complain to me how
you treat him. Bust his bugle!

/. Munniglut, Proprietor, to Peter Pitchin,
Editor,

"Stinger" Office, Friday, 2 p. m.
Business has detained me from the ofBce
until now, and what do I find? Not a soul

202 THE COLLECTED WORKS

about the place, no copy, not a stickful of live
matter on the galleys! There can be no paper
this week. What you have all done with
yourselves I am sure I don't know; one would
suppose there had been smallpox about the
place. You will please come down and
explain this Hegira at once — at once, if you
please 1

P.S. — ^That troublesome Muskier — ^you
may remember he dropped in on Monday to
inquire about something or other — has taken
a sort of shop exactly opposite here, and
seems, at this distance, to be doing something
to a shotgun. I presume he is a gunsmith. So
we are precious well rid of him.

Peter Pitchin, Editor to J, Munniglut, Pro-
prietor,

Pier No. 3, Friday Evening.
Just a line or two to say I am suddenly called
away to bury my sick mother. When that is
off my mind I'll write you what I know about
the Hegira, the Flight into Egypt, the Retreat
of the Ten Thousand, and whatever else you
would like to learn. There is nothing mean
about mel I don't think there has been any

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 203

wilful desertion. You may engage an editor
for, say, fifty years, with the privilege of keep-
ing him regularly, if, at the end of that time,
I should break my neck hastening back.

P.S.— I hope that poor fellow Muskier will
make a fair profit in the gunsmithing line.
Jump him for an adl

204 THE COLLECTED WORKS

CORRUPTING THE PRESS

WHEN Joel Bird was up for Gov-
ernor of Missouri, Sam Henly
was editing the Berr5rwood
Bugle; and no sooner was the
nomination made by the State Convention than
he came out hot against the party. He was an
able writer, was Sam, and the lies he invented
about our candidate were shocking! That,
however, we endured very well, but presently
Sam turned squarely about and began telling
the truth. This was a little too much; the
County Committee held a hasty meeting, and
decided that it must be stopped ; so I, Henry
Barber, was sent for to make arrangements to
that end. I knew something of Sam: had pur-
chased him several times, and I estimated his
present value at about one thousand dollars.
This seemed to the committee a reasonable
figure, and on my mentioning it to Sam he
said "he thought that about the fair thing;
it should never be said that the Bugle was a
hard paper to deal with." There was, how-

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 205

ever, some delay in raising the money; the
candidates for the local offices had not dis-
posed of their autumn hogs yet, and were in
financial straits. Some of them contributed
a pig each, one gave twenty bushels of corn,
another a flock of chickens ; and the man who
aspired to the distinction of County Judge
paid his assessment with a wagon. These
things had to be converted into cash at a ruin-
ous sacrifice, and in the meantime Sam kept
pouring an incessant stream of hot shot into
our political camp. Nothing I could say
would make him stay his hand; he invariably
replied that it was no bargain until he had
the money. The committeemen were furious ;
it required all my eloquence to prevent their
declaring the contract null and void; but at
last a new, clean one thousand-dollar note was
passed over to me, which in hot haste I trans-
ferred to Sam at his residence.

That evening there was a meeting of the
committee: all seemed in high spirits again,
except Hooker of Jayhawk. This old wretch
sat back and shook his head during the entire
session, and just before adjournment said, as
he took his hat to go, that p'r'aps 'twas orl
right and on the squar'; maybe thar warVt
any shenannigan, but he war dubersome — ^yes,

206 THE COLLECTED WORKS

he war dubersome. The old curmudgeon
repeated this until I was exasperated beyond
restraint.

"Mr. Hooker," said I, "IVe known Sam
Henly ever since he was so high, and there
isn't an honester man in old Missouri. Sam
Henly's word is as good as his note! What's
more, if any gentleman thinks he would enjoy
a first-class funeral, and if he will supply the
sable accessories, I'll supply the corpse. And
he can take it home with him from this meet-
ing."

At this point Mr. Hooker was troubled
with leaving.

Having got this business off my conscience
I slept late next day. When I stepped into
the street I saw at once that something was
"up." There were knots of people gathered
at the corners, some reading eagerly that
morning's issue of the Bugle, some gesticulat-
ing, and others stalking moodily about mutter-
ing curses, not loud but deep. Suddenly I
heard an excited clamor — a confused roar of
many lungs, and the trampling of innumerable
feet. In this babel of noises I could distin-
guish the words "Kill him!" "Wa'm his
hide!" and so forth; and, looking up the
street, I saw what seemed to be the whole

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 207

male population racing down it I am very
excitable, and, though I did not know whose
hide was to be warmed, nor why anyone was
to be killed, I shot off in front of the howling
masses, shouting "Kill him!" and "Warm his
hide!" as loudly as the loudest, all the time
looking out for the victim. Down the street
we flew like a storm; then I turned a corner,
thinking the scoundrel must have gone up
that street; then bolted through a public
square; over a bridge; under an arch; finally
back into the main street; yelling like a pan-
ther, and resolved to slaughter the first human
being I should overtake. The crowd followed
my lead, turning as I turned, shrieking as I
shrieked, and — all at once it came to me that
I was the man whose hide was to be warmed!
It is needless to dwellupon the sensation
this discovery gave me ; happily I was within
a few yards of the committee-rooms, and into
these I dashed, closing and bolting the doors
behind me, and mounting the stairs like a flash.
The committee was in solemn session, sitting
in a nice, even row on the front benches, each
man with his elbows on his knees, and his
chin resting in the palms of his hands — think-
ing. At each man's feet lay a neglected copy
of the Bugle. Every member fixed his eyes

208 THE COLLECTED WORKS

on me, but no one stirred, none uttered a
sound. There was something awful in this
preternatural silence, made more impressive
by the hoarse murmur of the crowd outside,
breaking down the door. I could endure it
no longer, but strode forward and snatched
up the paper lying at the feet of the chairman.
At the head of the editorial columns, in letters
half an inch long, were the following amazing
head-lines :

"Dastardly Outrage I Corruption Ram-
pant in Our Midst! The Vampires Foiled!
Henry Barber at his Old Game! The Rat
Gnaws a File! The Democratic Hordes
Attempt to Ride Roughshod Over a Free
People! Base Endeavor to Bribe the Editor
of this Paper with a Twenty-Dollar Note!
The Money Given to the Orphan Asylum."

I read no farther, but stood stockstill in the
center of the floor, and fell into a reverie.
Twenty dollars! Somehow it seemed a mere
trifle. Nine hundred and eighty dollars! I
did not know there was so much money in the
world. Twenty — no, eighty — one thousand
dollars! There were big, black figures float-
ing all over the floor. Incessant cataracts of
them poured down the walls, stopped, and
§hied off as I looked at them, and began to go

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 209

it again when I lowered my eyes. Occasion-
ally the figures 20 would take shape some-
where about the floor, and then the figures 980
would slide up and overlay them. Then, like
the lean kine of Pharoah's dream, they would
all march away and devour the fat naughts
of the number 1,000. And dancing like gnats
in the air were myriads of little caduceus-like,
phantoms, thus — $$$$$. I could not at all
make it out, but began to comprehend my posi-
tion directly Old Hooker, without moving
from his seat, began to drown the noise of
countless feet on the stairs by elevating his
thin falsetto :

"P'r'aps, Mr. Cheerman, it's orl on the
squar'. We know Mr. Henly can't tell a lie;
but I'm powerful dubersome that thar's a
balyance dyue this yer committee from the
gent who hez the flo' — if he ain't done gone
laid it yout fo' sable ac — ac — fo' fyirst-class
funerals."

I felt at that moment as if I should like to
play the leading character in a first-class
funeral myself. I felt that every man in my
position ought to have a nice, comfortable cof-
fin, with a silver door-plate, a foot-warmer,
and bay-windows for his ears. How do you
suppose you would have felt?

210 THE COLLECTED WORKS

My leap from the window of that commit-
tee room, my speed in streaking it for the ad-
jacent forest, my self-denial in ever afterward
resisting the impulse to return to Berrywood
and look after my political and material in-
terests there — these I have always considered
things to be justly proud of, and I hope I am
proud of them.

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 211

^THE BUBBLE REPUTATION"

HOW ANOTHER MAN'S WAS SOUGHT AND
PRICKED

IT was a stormy night in the autumn of
1930. The hour was about eleven. San
Francisco lay in darkness, for the labor-
ers at the gas works had struck and de-
stroyed the company's property because a
newspaper to which a cousin of the man-
ager was a subscriber had censured the
course of a potato merchant related by
marriage to a member of the Knights
of Leisure. Electric lights had not at that
period been reinvented. The sky was filled
with great masses of black cloud which,
driven rapidly across the star-fields by winds
unfelt on the earth and momentarily altering
their fantastic forms, seemed instinct with a
life and activity of their own and endowed
with awful powers of evil, to the exercise of
which they might at any time set their ma-
lignant will.

212 THE COLLECTED WORKS

An observer standing, at this time, at the
corner of Paradise avenue and Great White
Throne w^alk in Sorrel Hill cemetery v^ould
have seen a human figure moving among the
graves toward the Superintendent's residence.
Dimly and fitfully visible in the intervals of
thinner gloom, this figure had a most uncanny
and disquieting aspect. A long black cloak
shrouded it from neck to heel. Upon its head
was a slouch hat, pulled down across the fore-
head and almost concealing the face, which
was further hidden by a half-mask, only the
beard being occasionally visible as the head
was lifted partly above the collar of the cloak.
The man wore upon his feet jack-boots whose
wide, funnel-shaped legs had settled down in
many a fold and crease about his ankles, as
could be seen whenever accident parted the
bottom of the cloak. His arms were con-
cealed, but sometimes he stretched out the
right to steady himself by a headstone as he
crept stealthily but blindly over the uneven
ground. At such times a close scrutiny of the
hand would have disclosed in the palm the
hilt of a poniard, the blade of which lay along
the wrist, hidden in the sleeve. In short, the
man's garb, his movements, the hour — every-
thing proclaimed him a reporter.

^ OF AMBROSE BIERCE 213

But what did he there?

On the morning of that day the editor of
the Daily Malefactor had touched the button
of a bell numbered 216 and in response to the
summons Mr. Longbo Spittleworth, reporter,
had been shot into the room out of an inclined
tube.

"I understand," said the editor, "that you
are 216 — am I right?"

"That," said the reporter, catching his
breath and adjusting his clothing, both some-
what disordered by the celerity of his flight
through the tube, — "that is my number."

"Information has reached us," continued
the editor, "that the Superintendent of the
Sorrel Hill cemetery — one Inhumio, whose
very name suggests inhumanity — is guilty of
the grossest outrages in the administration of
the great trust confided to his hands by the
sovereign people."

"The cemetery is private property," faintly
suggested 216.

"It is alleged," continued the great man, dis-
daining to notice the interruption, "that in
violation of popular rights he refuses to per-
mit his accounts to be inspected by represent-
atives of the press."

"Under the law, you know, he is re-

214 THE COLLECTED WORKS

sponsible to the directors of the ceme-
tery company," the reporter ventured to
interject.

"They say," pursued the editor, heedless,
"that the inmates are in many cases badly
lodged and insufficiently clad, and that in
consequence they are usually cold. It is as-
serted that they are never fed — except to the
worms. Statements have been made to the
effect that males and females are permitted to
occupy the same quarters, to the incalculable
detriment of public morality. Many clan-
destine villainies are alleged of this fiend in
human shape, and it is desirable that his un-
derground methods be unearthed in the Male-
factor, If he resists we will drag his family
skeleton from the privacy of his domestic
closet. There is money in it for the paper,
fame for you — are you ambitious, 216?"

"I am — bitious."

"Go, then," cried the editor, rising and
waving his hand imperiously — "go and *seek
the bubble reputation'."

"The bubble shall be sought," the young
man replied, and leaping into a man-hole in
the floor, disappeared. A moment later the
editor, who after dismissing his subordinate,
had stood motionless, as if lost in thought,

^ OF AMBROSE BIERCE 215

sprang suddenly to the man-hole and shouted
down it: "Hello, 216?"

"Aye, aye, sir," came up a faint and far
reply.

"About that ^bubble reputation' — you un-
derstand, I suppose, that the reputation which
you are to seek is that of the other man."

In the execution of his duty, in the hope of
his employer's approval, in the costume of his
profession, Mr. Longbo Spittleworth, other-
wise known as 216, has already occupied a
place in the mind's eye of the intelligent
reader. Alas for poor Mr. Inhumiol

A few days after these events that fearless,
independent and enterprising guardian and
guide of the public, the San Francisco Daily
Malefactor, contained a whole-page article
whose headlines are here presented with some
necessary typographical mitigation :

"Hell Upon Earth! Corruption Rampant
in the Management of the Sorrel Hill Cemet-
ery. The Sacred City of the Dead in the
Leprous Clutches of a Demon in Human
Form. Fiendish Atrocities Committed in
^God's Acre.' The Holy Dead Thrown
around Loose. Fragments of Mothers. Seg-
regation of a Beautiful Young Lady Who in
Life Was the Light of a Happy Household,

216 BIERCE'S COLLECTED WORKS

A Superintendent Who Is an Ex-Convict
How He Murdered His Neighbor to Start
the Cemetery. He Buries His Own Dead
Elsewhere. Extraordinary Insolence to a
Representative of the Public Press. Little
Eliza's Last Words: ^Mamma, Feed Me to
the Pigs.' A Moonshiner Who Runs an Il-
licit Bone-Button Factory in One Corner of
the Grounds. Buried Head Downward. Re-
volting Mausoleistic Orgies. Dancing on the
Dead. Devilish Mutilation — a Pile of Late
Lamented Noses and Sainted Ears. No Sep-
aration of the Sexes ; Petitions for Chaperons
Unheeded. 'VeaP as Supplied to the Super-
intendent's Employees. A Miscreant's Record
from His Birth. Disgusting Subserviency of
Our Contemporaries and Strong Indications
of Collusion. Nameless Abnormalities.
^Doubled Up Like a Nut-Cracker.' Wasn't
Planted White.' Horribly Significant Re-
duction in the Price of Lard. The Question
of the Hour: Whom Do You Fry Your
Doughnuts In?"

THE OCEAN WAVE

A SHIPWRECKOLLECTION

AS I left the house she said I was a
cruel old thing, and not a bit nice,
and she hoped I never, never
would come back. So I shipped
as mate on the Mudlark, bound from London
to wherever the captain might think it ex-
pedient to sail. It had not been thought ad-
visable to hamper Captain Abersouth with
orders, for when he could not have his own
way, it had been observed, he would contrive
in some ingenious way to make the voyage
unprofitable. The owners of the Mudlark
had grown wise in their generation, and now
let him do pretty much as he pleased, carry-
ing such cargoes as he fancied to ports where
the nicest women were. On the voyage of
which I write he had taken no cargo at all;
he said it would only make the Mudlark
heavy and slow. To hear this mariner talk
one would have supposed he did not know
very much about commerce.

We had a few passengers — not nearly so
many as we had laid in basins and stewards

220 THE COLLECTED WORKS

for; for before coming off to the ship most
of those who had bought tickets would in-
quire whither she was bound, and when not
informed would go back to their hotels and
send a bandit on board to remove their bagg-
age. But there were enough left to be rather
troublesome. They cultivated the rolling gait
peculiar to sailors when drunk, and the upper
deck was hardly wide enough for them to
go from the forecastle to the binnacle to set
their watches by the ship's compass. They
were always petitioning Captain Abersouth
to let the big anchor go, just to hear it plunge
in the water, threatening in case of refusal to
write to the newspapers. A favorite amuse-
ment with them was to sit in the lee of the
bulwarks, relating their experiences in former
voyages — voyages distinguished in every in-
stance by two remarkable features, the fre-
quency of unprecedented hurricanes and the
entire immunity of the narrator from sea-
sickness. It was very interesting to see them
sitting in a row telling these things, each man
with a basin between his legs.

One day there arose a great storm. The sea
walked over the ship as if it had never seen
a ship before and meant to enjoy it all it
could. The Mudlark labored very much —

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 221

far more, indeed, than the crew did; for these
innocents had discovered in possession of one
of their number a pair of leather-seated trous-
ers, and would do nothing but sit and play
cards for them ; in a month from leaving port
each sailor had owned them a dozen times.
They were so worn by being pushed over to
the winner that there was little but the seat
remaining, and that immortal part the cap-
tain finally kicked overboard — not malic-
iously, nor in an unfriendly spirit, but be-
cause he had a habit of kicking the seats of
trousers.

The storm increased in violence until it
succeeded in so straining the Mudlark that
she took in water like a teetotaler ; then it ap-
peared to get relief directly. This may be
said in justice to a storm at sea: when it has
broken off your masts, pulled out your rud-
der, carried away your boats and made a nice
hole in some inaccessible part of your hull it
will often go away in search of a fresh ship,
leaving you to take such measures for your
comfort as you may think fit. In our case
the captain thought fit to sit on the taffrail
reading a three-volume novel.

Seeing he had got about half way through
th? s^con4 yolum^j at which point the lovers

222 THE COLLECTED WORKS

would naturally be involved in the most hope-
less and heart-rending difficulties, I thought
he would be in a particularly cheerful humor,
so I approached him and informed him the
ship was going down.

"Well," said he, closing the book, but keep-
ing his forefinger between the pages to mark
his place, "she never would be good for much
after such a shaking-up as this. But, I say —
I wish you would just send the bo'sn forM
there to break up that prayer-meeting. The
Mudlark isn't a seamen's chapel, I suppose."

"But," I replied, impatiently, "can't some-
thing be done to lighten the ship?"

"Well," he drawled, reflectively, "seeing
she hasn't any masts left to cut away, nor any
cargo to — stay, you might throw over some
of the heaviest of the passengers if you think
it would do any good."

It was a happy thought — the intuition of
genius. Walking rapidly forward to the
foc'sle, which, being highest out of water,
was crowded with passengers, I seized a stout
old gentleman by the nape of the neck, pushed
him up to the rail, and chucked him over. He
did not touch the water: he fell on the apex
of a cone of sharks which sprang up from the
sea to meet him, their noses gathered to a

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 223

point, their tails just clearing the surface. I
think it unlikely that the old gentleman knew
what disposition had been made of him. Next,
I hurled over a woman and flung a fat baby
to the wild winds. The former was sharked
out of sight, the same as the old man ; the lat-
ter divided amongst the gulls.

I am relating these things exactly as they
occurred. It would be very easy to make a
fine story out of all this material — to tell how
that, while I was engaged in lightening the
ship, I was touched by the self-sacrificing
spirit of a beautiful young woman, who, to
save the life of her lover, pushed her aged
mother forward to where I was operating,
imploring me to take the old lady, but spare,
O, spare her dear Henry. I might go on to
set forth how that I not only did take the old
lady, as requested, but immediately seized
dear Henry, and sent him flying as far as I
could to leeward, having first broken his back
across the rail and pulled a double-fistful of
his curly hair out. I might proceed to state
that, feeling appeased, I then stole the long
boat and taking the beautiful maiden pulled
away from the ill-fated ship to the church of
St. Massaker, Fiji, where we were united by
a knot which I afterward untied with my

224 THE COLLECTED WORKS

teeth by eating her. But, in truth, nothing of
all this occurred, and I can not afford to be
the first writer to tell a lie just to interest the
reader. What really did occur is this: as I
stood on the quarter-deck, heaving over the
passengers, one after another. Captain Aber-
south, having finished his novel, walked aft
and quietly hove me over.

The sensations of a drowning man have
been so often related that I shall only briefly
explain that memory at once displayed her
treasures: all the scenes of my eventful life
crowded, though without confusion or fight-
ing, into my mind. I saw my whole career
spread out before me, like a map of Central
Africa since the discovery of the gorilla.
There were the cradle in which I had lain,
as a child, stupefied with soothing syrups ; the
perambulator, seated in which and propelled
from behind, I overthrew the schoolmaster,
and in which my infantile spine received its
curvature ; the nursery-maid, surrendering
her lips alternately to me and the gardener;
the old home of my youth, with the ivy and
the mortgage on it; my eldest brother, who by
will succeeded to the family debts; my sister,
who ran away with the Count von Pretzel,
coachman to a most respectable New York

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 225

family; my mother, standing in the attitude of
a saint, pressing with both hands her prayer-
book against the patent palpitators from
Madame Fahertini's; my venerable father,
sitting in his chimney corner, his silvered head
bowed upon his breast, his withered hands
crossed patiently in his lap, waiting with
Christian resignation for death, and drunk as
a lord — all this, and much more, came before
my mind's eye, and there was no charge for
admission to the show. Then there was a ring-
ing sound in my ears, my senses swam better
than I could, and as I sank down, down,
through fathomless depths, the amber light
falling through the water above my head
failed and darkened into blackness. Sud-
denly my feet struck something firm — it was
the bottom. Thank heaven, I was saved I

226 THE COLLECTED WORKS

THE CAPTAIN OF "THE CAMEL"

THIS ship was named the CameL In
some ways she was an extraordinary
vessel. She measured six hundred
tons; but when she had taken in
enough ballast to keep her from upsett-
ing like a shot duck, and was provisioned
for a three months' voyage, it was necessary
to be mighty fastidious in the choice of freight
and passengers. For illustration, as she was
about to leave port a boat came alongside
with two passengers, a man and his wife. They
had booked the day before, but had remained
ashore to get one more decent meal before
committing themselves to the "briny cheap,"
as the man called the ship's fare. The woman
came aboard, and the man was preparing to
follow, when the captain leaned over the side
and saw him.

"Well," said the captain, "what do you
want?"
"What do I want?" said the man, laying

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 227

hold of the ladder. "I'm a-going to embark in
this here ship — that's what I want."

"Not with all that fat on you," roared the
captain. "You don't weigh an ounce less
than eighteen stone, and I've got to have in
my anchor yet. You wouldn't have me leave
the anchor, I suppose?"

The man said he did not care about the
anchor — he was just as God had made him
(he looked as if his cook had had something to
do with it) and, sink or swim, he purposed
embarking in that ship. A good deal of
wrangling ensued, but one of the sailors
finally threw the man a cork life-preserver,
and the captain said that would lighten him
and he might come abroad.

This was Captain Abersouth, formerly of
the Mudlark — as good a seaman as ever sat
on the taffrail reading a three volume novel.
Nothing could equal this man's passion for
literature. For every voyage he laid in so
many bales of novels that there was no stow-
age for the cargo. There were novels in the
hold, and novels between-decks, and novels in
the saloon, and in the passengers' beds.

The Camel had been designed and built
by her owner, an architect in the City, and
she looked about as much like a ship as

228 THE COLLECTED WORKS

Noah's Ark did. She had bay windows and
a veranda; a cornice and doors at the water-
line. These doors had knockers and servant's
bells. There had been a futile attempt at an
area. The passenger saloon was on the upper
deck, and had a tile roof. To this humplike
structure the ship owed her name. Her de-
signer had erected several churches — that of
St. Ignotus is still used as a brewery in Hot-
bath Meadows — and, possessed of the ecclesi-
astic idea, had given the Camel a transept;
but, finding this impeded her passage through
the water, he had it removed. This weakened
the vessel amidships. The mainmast was
something like a steeple. It had a weather-
cock. From this spire the eye commanded one
of the finest views in England.

Such was the Camel when I joined her in
1864 for a voyage of discovery to the South
Pole. The expedition was under the "aus-
pices" of the Royal Society for the Promotion
of Fair Play. At a meeting of this excellent
association, it had been "resolved" that the
partiality of science for the North Pole was
an invidious distinction between two objects
equally meritorious; that Nature had marked
her disapproval of it in the case of Sir John
Franklin and many of his imitators; that it

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 229

served them very well right; that this enter-
prise should be undertaken as a protest
against the spirit of undue bias; and, finally,
that no part of the responsibility or expense
should devolve upon the society in its cor-
porate character, but any individual member
might contribute to the fund if he were fool
enough. It is only common justice to say that
none of them was. The Camel merely parted
her cable one day while I happened to be on
board — drifted out of the harbor southward,
followed by the execrations of all who knew
her, and could not get back. In two months
she had crossed the equator, and the heat be-
gan to grow insupportable.

Suddenly we were becalmed. There had
been a fine breeze up to three o'clock in the
afternoon and the ship had made as much as
two knots an hour when without a word of
warning the sails began to belly the wrong
way, owing to the impetus that the ship had
acquired ; and then, as this expired, they hung
as limp and lifeless as the skirts of a claw-
hammer coat. The Camel not only stood stock
still but moved a little backward toward Eng-
land. Old Ben the boatswain said that he'd
never knowed but one deader calm, and that,
he explained, was when Preacher Jack, the

230 THE COLLECTED WORKS

reformed sailor, had got excited in a sermon
in a seaman's chapel and shouted that the
Archangel Michael would chuck the Dragon
into the brig and give him a taste of the rope's-
end, damn his eyes!

We lay in this woful state for the better
part of a year, when, growing impatient, the
crew deputed me to look up the captain and
see if something could not be done about it.
I found him in a remote cobwebby corner
between-decks, with a book in his hand. On
one side of him, the cords newly cut, were
three bales of "Ouida" ; on the other a mount-
ain of Miss M. E. Braddon towered above his
head. He had finished "Ouida" and was
tackling Miss Braddon. He was greatly
changed.

"Captain Abersouth," said I, rising on tip-
toe so as to overlook the lower slopes of Mrs.
Braddon, "will you be good enough to tell me
how long this thing is going on?"

"Can't say, I'm sure," he replied without
pulling his eyes off the page. "They'll prob-
ably make up about the middle of the book.
In the meantime old Pondronummus will
foul his top-hamper and take out his
papers for Looney Haven, and young Mon-
shure de Boojower will come in for a

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 231

million. Then if the proud and fair Angelica
doesn't luff and come into his wake after piz-
ening that sea lawyer, Thundermuzzle, I
don't know nothing about the deeps and shal-
lers of the human heart."

I could not take so hopeful a view of the
situation, and went on deck, feeling very
much discouraged. I had no sooner got my
head out than I observed that the ship was
moving at a high rate of speed!

We had on board a bullock and a Dutch-
man. The bullock was chained by the neck
to the foremast, but the Dutchman was
allowed a good deal of liberty, being shut up
at night only. There was bad blood between
the two — a feud of long standing, having its
origin in the Dutchman's appetite for milk
and the bullock's sense of personal dignity;
the particular cause of offense it would be
tedious to relate. Taking advantage of his
enemy's afternoon siesta, the Dutchman had
now managed to sneak by him, and had gone
out on the bowsprit to fish. When the animal
waked and saw the other creature enjoying
himself he straddled his chain, leveled his
horns, got his hind feet against the mast and
laid a course for the offender. The chain was
strong, the mast firm, and the ship, as Byron

232 THE COLLECTED WORKS

says, "walked the water like a thing of
course."

After that we kept the Dutchman right
where he was, night and day, the old Camel
making better speed than she had ever done
in the most favorable gale. We held due
south.

We had now been a long time without suf-
ficient food, particularly meat. We could
spare neither the bullock nor the Dutchman;
and the ship's carpenter, that traditional first
aid to the famished, was a mere bag of bones.
The fish would neither bite nor be bitten.
Most of the running-tackle of the ship had
been used for macaroni soup; all the leather
work, our shoes included, had been devoured
in omelettes; with oakum and tar we had
made fairly supportable salad. After a brief
experimental career as tripe the sails had de-
parted this life forever. Only two courses
remained from which to choose; we could
eat one another, as is the etiquette of the sea,
or partake of Captain Abersouth's novels.
Dreadful alternative! — but a choice. And it
is seldom, I think, that starving sailormen are
offered a shipload of the best popular authors
ready-roasted by the critics.

We ate that fiction. The works that the

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 233

captain had thrown aside lasted six months,
for most^of them were by the best-selling
authors and were pretty tough. After they
were gone — of course some had to be given
to the bullock and the Dutchman — we stood
by the captain, taking the other books from
his hands as he finished them. Sometimes,
when we were apparently at our last gasp, he
would skip a whole page of moralizing, or
a bit of description; and always, as soon as
he clearly foresaw the denouement — which he
generally did at about the middle of the
second volume — the work was handed over
to us without a word of repining.

The effect of this diet was not unpleasant
but remarkable. Physically, it sustained us;
mentally, it exalted us; morally, it made us
but a trifle worse than we were. We talked as
no human beings ever talked before. Our wit
was polished but without point. As in a stage
broadsword combat, every cut has its parry,
so in our conversation every remark suggested
the reply, and this necessitated a certain re-
joinder. The sequence once interrupted, the
whole was bosh; when the thread was broken
the beads were seen to be waxen and hollow.

We made love to one another, and plotted
darkly in the deepest obscurity of the hold.

234 THE COLLECTED WORKS

Each set of conspirators had its proper
listener at the hatch. These, leaning too far
over would bump their heads together and
fight. Occasionally there was confusion
amongst them: two or more would assert a
right to overhear the same plot. I remember
at one time the cook, the carpenter, the
second assistant-surgeon, and an able seaman
contended with handspikes for the honor of
betraying my confidence. Once there were
three masked murderers of the second watch
bending at the same instant over the sleeping
form of a cabin-boy, who had been heard to
mutter, a week previously, that he had "Gold!
gold!" the accumulation of eighty — yes,
eighty — ^years' piracy on the high seas, while
sitting as M.P. for the borough of Zaccheus-
cum-Down, and attending church regularly.
I saw the captain of the foretop surrounded
by suitors for his hand, while he was himself
fingering the edge of a packing-case, and sing-
ing an amorous ditty to a lady-love shaving
at a mirror.

Our diction consisted, in about equal parts,
of classical allusion, quotation from the
stable, simper from the scullery, cant from
the clubs, and the technical slang of heraldry.
We boasted much of ancestry, and admired

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 235

the whiteness of our hands whenever the skin
was visible through a fault in the grease and
tar. Next to love, the vegetable kingdom,
murder, arson, adultery and ritual, we talked
most of art. The wooden figure-head of the
Camel, representing a Guinea nigger detect-
ing a bad smell, and the monochrome picture
of two back-broken dolphins on the stern,
acquired a new importance. The Dutchman
had destroyed the nose of the one by kicking
his toes against it, and the other was nearly
obliterated by the slops of the cook; but each
had its daily pilgrimage, and each constantly
developed occult beauties of design and
subtle excellences of execution. On the whole
we were greatly altered; and if the supply of
contemporary fiction had been equal to the
demand, the Camel, I fear, would not have
been strong enough to contain the moral and
aesthetic forces fired by the maceration of the
brains of authors in the gastric juices of
sailors.

Having now got the ship's literature off
his mind into ours, the captain went on deck
for the first time since leaving port. We were
still steering the same course, and, taking his
first observation of the sun, the captain dis-
covered that we were in latitude 83* south.

236 THE COLLECTED WORKS

The heat was insufferable; the air was like
the breath of a furnace within a furnace. The
sea steamed like a boiling cauldron, and in
the vapor our bodies were temptingly par-
boiled— our ultimate meal was preparing.
Warped by the sun, the ship held both ends
high out of the water; the deck of the fore-
castle was an inclined plane, on which the
bullock labored at a disadvantage; but the
bowsprit was now vertical and the Dutch-
man's tenure precarious. A thermometer
hung against the mainmast, and we grouped
ourselves about it as the captain went up to
examine the register.

"One hundred and ninety degrees Fahren-
heit I" he muttered in evident astonishment.
"Impossible!" Turning sharply about, he
ran his eyes over us, and inquired in a per-
emptory tone, "who's been in command while
I was runnin' my eye over that book?"

"Well, captain," I replied, as respectfully
as I knew how, "the fourth day out I had the
unhappiness to be drawn into a dispute about
a game of cards with your first and second
officers. In the absence of those excellent sea-
men, sir, I thought it my duty to assume con-
trol of the ship."

"Killed 'em, hey?"

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 237

"Sir, they committed suicide by question-
ing the efficacy of four kings and an ace."

"Well, you lubber, what have you to say in
defense of this extraordinary weather?"

"Sir, it is no fault of mine. We are far-
very far south, and it is now the middle of
July. The weather is uncomfortable, I ad-
mit; but considering the latitude and season,
it is not, I protest, unseasonable."

"Latitude and season!" he shrieked, livid
with rage — "latitude and season! Why, you
junk-rigged, flat-bottomed, meadow lugger,
don't you know any better than that? Didn't
yer little baby brother ever tell ye that south-
ern latitudes is colder than northern, and that
July is the middle o' winter here? Go below,
you son of a scullion, or I'll break your
bones!"

"Oh! very well," I replied; "I'm not going
to stay on deck and listen to such low language
as that, I warn you. Have it your own way."

The words had no sooner left my lips, than a
piercing cold wind caused me to cast my eye
upon the thermometer. In the new regime of
science the mercury was descending rapidly;
but in a moment the instrument was obscured
by a blinding fall of snow. Towering ice-
bergs rose from the water on every side, hang-

238 THE COLLECTED WORKS

ing their jagged masses hundreds of feet above
the masthead, and shutting us completely in.
The ship twisted and writhed; her decks
bulged upward, and every timber groaned
and cracked like the report of a pistol. The
Camel was frozen fast. The jerk of her sud-
den stopping snapped the bullock's chain, and
sent both that animal and the Dutchman over
the bows, to accomplish their warfare on the
ice.

Elbowing my way forward to go below, as
I had threatened, I saw the crew tumble to
the deck on either hand like ten-pins. They
were frozen stiff. Passing the captain, I
asked him sneeringly how he liked the
weather under the new regime. He replied
with a vacant stare. The chill had penetrated
to the brain, and affected his mind. He mur-
mured :

"In this delightful spot, happy in the
world's esteem, and surrounded by all that
makes existence dear, they passed the re-
mainder of their lives. The End."

His jaw dropped. The captain of the
Camel was dead.

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 239

THE MAN OVERBOARD

THE good ship Nupple-duck was
drifting rapidly upon a sunken
coral reef, which seemed to ex-
tend a reasonless number of leagues
to the right and left without a break,
and I was reading Macaulay's "Naseby
Fight" to the man at the wheel. Every-
thing was, in fact, going on as nicely
as heart could wish, when Captain Aber-
south, standing on the companion-stair, poked
his head above deck and asked where
we were. Pausing in my reading, I informed
him that we had got as far as the disastrous
repulse of Prince Rupert's cavalry, adding
that if he would have the goodness to hold
his jaw we should be making it awkward for
the wounded in about three minutes, and he
might bear a hand at the pockets of the slain.
Just then the ship struck heavily, and went
down I

240 THE COLLECTED WORKS

Calling another ship, I stepped aboard, and
gave directions to be taken to No. 900 Totten-
ham Court Road, where I had an aunt; then,
walking aft to the man at the wheel, asked
him if he would like to hear me read "Naseby
Fight." He thought he would: he would like
to hear that, and then I might pass on to some-
thing else — Kinglake's "Crimean War," the
proceedings at the trial of Warren Hastings,
or some such trifle, just to wile away the time
till eight bells.

All this time heavy clouds had been gather-
ing along the horizon directly in front of the
ship, and a deputation of passengers now came
to the man at the wheel to demand that she be
put about, or she would run into them, which
the spokesman explained would be unusual.
I thought at the time that it certainly was not
the regular thing to do, but, as I was myself
only a passenger, did not deem it expedient
to take a part in the heated discussion that en-
sued ; and, after all, it did not seem likely that
the weather in those clouds would be much
worse than that in Tottenham Court Road,
where I had an aunt.

It was finally decided to refer the matter to
arbitration, and after many names had been
submitted ^nd rejected by both sides, it w^s

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 241

agreed that the captain of the ship should act
as arbitrator if his consent could be obtained,
and I was delegated to conduct the negotia*
tions to that end. With considerable diffi-
culty, I persuaded him to accept the respons-
ibility.

He was a feeble-minded sort of fel-
low named Troutbeck, who was always in a
funk lest he should make enemies; never re-
flecting that most men would a little rather
be his enemies than not. He had once been
the ship's cook, but had cooked so poisonously
ill that he had been forcibly transferred from
galley to quarter-deck by the dyspeptic sur-
vivors of his culinary career.

The little captain went aft with me to listen
to arguments of the dissatisfied passengers and
the obstinate steersman, as to whether we
should take our chances in the clouds, or tail
off and run for the opposite horizon; but on
approaching the wheel, we found both helms-
man and passengers in a condition of pro-
found astonishment, rolling their eyes about
towards every point of the compass, and shak-
ing their heads in hopeless perplexity. It was
rather remarkable, certainly: the bank of
cloud which had worried the landsmen was
now directly astern, and the ship was cutting

242 THE COLLECTED WORKS

along lively in her own wake, toward the
point from which she had come, and straight
away from Tottenham Court Road! Every-
body declared it was a miracle ; the chaplain
was piped up for prayers, and the man at the
wheel was as truly penitent as if he had been
detected robbing an empty poor-box.

The explanation was simple enough, and
dawned upon me the moment I saw how mat-
ters stood. During the dispute between the
helmsman and the deputation, the former had
renounced his wheel to gesticulate, and I,
thinking no harm, had amused myself, during
a rather tedious debate, by revolving the thing
this way and that, and had unconsciously put
the ship about. By a coincidence not unusual
in low latitudes, the wind had effected a cor-
responding transposition at the same time,
and was now bowling us as merrily back to-
ward the place where I had embarked, as it
had previously wafted us in the direction of
Tottenham Court Road, where I had an aunt.
I must here so far anticipate, as to explain
that some years later these various incidents —
particularly the reading of "Naseby Fight" —
led to the adoption, in our mercantile marine,
of a rule which I believe is still extant, to the
effect that one must not speak to the man at

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 243

the wheel unless the man at the wheel speaks
first.

II

It is only by inadvertence that I have omitted
the information that the vessel in which I was
now a pervading influence was the Bonny-
clabber (Troutbeck, master), of Malvern
Heights.

The Bonnyclabbe/s reactionary course had
now brought her to the spot at which I had
taken passage. Passengers and crew, fatigued
by their somewhat awkward attempts to mani-
fest their gratitude for our miraculous deliver-
ance from the cloud-bank, were snoring peace-
fully in unconsidered attitudes about the deck,
when the lookout man, perched on the
supreme extremity of the mainmast, consum-
ing a cold sausage, began an apparently
preconcerted series of extraordinary and
unimaginable noises. He coughed, sneezed,
and barked simultaneously — bleated in
one breath, and cackled in the next —
sputteringly shrieked, and chatteringly
squealed, with a bass of suffocated roars.
There were desolutory vocal explosions, ta-
pering off in long wails, half smothered in un-

244 THE COLLECTED WORKS

intelligible small-talk. He whistled, wheezed,
and trumpeted; began to sharp, thought bet-
ter of it and flatted; neighed like a horse, and
then thundered like a drum! Through it all
he continued making incomprehensible sig-
nals with one hand while clutching his throat
with the other. Presently he gave it up, and
silently descended to the deck.

By this time we were all attention ; and no
sooner had he set foot amongst us, than he
was assailed with a tempest of questions
which, had they been visible, would have re-
sembled a flight of pigeons. He made no
reply — not even by a look, but passed through
our enclosing mass with a grim, defiant step,
a face deathly white, and a set of the jaw as of
one repressing an ambitious dinner, or ignor-
ing a venomous toothache. For the poor man
was choking!

Passing down the companion-way, the
patient sought the surgeon's cabin, with the
ship's company at his heels. The surgeon was
fast asleep, the lark-like performance at the
masthead having been inaudible in that lower
region. While some of us were holding a
whisky-bottle to the medical nose, in order to
apprise the medical intelligence of the de-
mand upon it, the patient seated himself in

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 245

statuesque silence. By this time his pallor,
which was but the mark of a determined
mind, had given place to a fervent crimson,
which visibly deepened into a pronounced
purple, and was ultimately superseded by a
clouded blue, shot through with opalescent
gleams, and smitten with variable streaks of
black. The face was swollen and shapeless,
the neck puffy. The eyes protruded like pegs
of a hat-stand.

Pretty soon the doctor was got awake, and
after making a careful examination of his
patient, remarking that it was a lovely case of
stopupagus (Esophagi, took a tool and set to
work, producing with no difSculty a cold
sausage qf the size, figure, and general bear-
ing of a somewhat self-important banana.
The operation had been performed amid
breathless silence, but the moment it was con-
cluded the patient, whose neck and head had
visibly collapsed, sprang to his feet and
shouted :

"Man overboard!"

That is what he had been trying to say.

There was a confused rush to the upper
deck, and everybody flung something over the
ship's side — a life-belt, a chicken-coop, a coil
of rope, a spar, an old sail, a pocket handker-

246 THE COLLECTED WORKS

chief, an iron crowbar — any movable article
which it was thought might be useful to a
drowning man who had followed the vessel
during the hour that had elapsed since the
initial alarm at the mast-head. In a few
moments the ship was pretty nearly dismantled
of everything that could be easily renounced,
and some excitable passenger having cut away
the boats there was nothing more that we
could do, though the chaplain explained that
if the ill-fated gentleman in the wet did not
turn up after a while it was his intention to
stand at the stern and read the burial service
of the Church of England.

Presently it occurred to some ingenious per-
son to inquire who had gone overboard, and
all hands being mustered and the roll called,
to our great chagrin every man answered to
his name, passengers and all! Captain Trout-
beck, however, held that in a matter of so
great importance a simple roll-call was insuf-
ficient, and with an assertion of authority that
was encouraging insisted that every person on
board be separately sworn. The result was
the same; nobody was missing and the captain,
begging pardon for having doubted our verac-
ity, retired to his cabin to avoid further re-
sponsibility, but expressed a hope that for the

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 247

purpose of having everything properly re-
corded in the log-book we would apprise him
of any further action that we might think it
advisable to take. I smiled as I remembered
that in the interest of the unknown gentleman
whose peril we had overestimated I had flung
the log-book over the ship's side.

Soon afterward I felt suddenly inspired
with one of those great ideas that come to most
men only once or twice in a lifetime, and to
the ordinary story teller never. Hastily re-
convening the ship's company I mounted the
capstan and thus addressed them:

"Shipmates, there has been a mistake. In
the fervor of an ill-considered compassion we
have made pretty free with certain movable
property of an eminent firm of shipowners of
Malvern Heights. For this we shall undoubt-
edly be called to account if we are ever so
fortunate as to drop anchor in Tottenham
Court Road, where I have an aunt. It would
add strength to our defence if we could show
to the satisfaction of a jury of our peers that
in heeding the sacred promptings of humanity
we had acted with some small degree of com-
mon sense. If, for example, we could make
it appear that there really was a man over-
board, who might have been comforted and

248 THE COLLECTED WORKS

sustained by the material consolation that we
so lavishly dispensed in the form of buoyant
articles belonging to others, the British heart
would find in that fact a mitigating circum-
stance pleading eloquently in our favor. Gen-
tlemen and ship's officers, I venture to pro-
pose that we do now throw a man overboard."

The effect was electrical: the motion was
carried by acclamation and there was a
unanimous rush for the now wretched
mariner whose false alarm at the masthead
was the cause of our embarrassment, but on
second thoughts it was decided to substitute
Captain Troutbeck, as less generally useful
and more undeviatingly in error. The sailor
had made one mistake of considerable magni-
tude, but the captain's entire existence was a
mistake altogether. He was fetched up from
his cabin and chucked over.

At 900 Tottenham Road Court lived an
aunt of mine — a good old lady who had
brought me up by hand and taught me many
wholesome lessons in morality, which in my
later life have proved of extreme value. Fore-
most among these I may mention her solemn
and oft-repeated injunction never to tell a lie
without a definite and specific reason for do-
ing so. Many years' experience in the viola-

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 249

tion of this principle enables me to speak with
authority as to its general soundness. I have,
therefore, much pleasure in making a slight
correction in the preceding chapter of this
tolerably true history. It was there affirmed
that I threw the Bonny clabber's log-book into
the sea. The statement is entirely false, and I
can discover no reason for having made it that
will for a moment weigh against those I now
have for the preservation of that log-book.

The progress of the story has developed
new necessities, and I now find it convenient
to quote from that book passages which it
could not have contained if cast into the sea
at the time stated; for if thrown upon the re-
sources of my imagination I might find the
temptation to exaggerate too strong to be re-
sisted.

It is needless to worry the reader with those
entries in the book referring to events already
related. Our record will begin on the day of
the captain's consignment to the deep, after
which era I made the entries myself.

"June 22nd. — Not much doing in the way
of gales, but heavy swells left over from some
previous blow. Latitude and longitude not
notably different from last observation. Ship
laboring a trifle, owing to lack of top-hamper,

250 THE COLLECTED WORKS

everything of that kind having been cut away
in consequence of Captain Troutbeck having
accidently fallen overboard while fishing
from the bowsprit. Also threw over cargo
and everything that we could spare. Miss
our sails rather, but if they save our dear cap-
tain, we shall be content. Weather flagrant

"23d. — Nothing from Captain Troutbeck.
Dead calm — also dead whale. The passen-
gers having become preposterous in various
ways, Mr. Martin, the chief officer, had three
of the ringleaders tied up and rope's-ended.
He thought it advisable also to flog an equal
number of the crew, by way of being impar-
tial. Weather ludicrous.

"24th. — Captain still prefers to stop away,
and does not telegraph. The *captain of the
foretop' — there isn't any foretop now — ^was
put in irons to-day by Mr. Martin for eating
cold sausage while on look-out. Mr. Martin
has flogged the steward, who had neglected to
holy-stone the binnacle and paint the dead-
lights. The steward is a good fellow all the
same. Weather iniquitous.

"25th. — Can't think whatever has become of
Captain Troutbeck. He must be getting
hungry by this time ; for although he has his
fishing-tackle with him, he has no bait. Mr.

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 251

Martin inspected the entries in this book
to-day. He is a most excellent and humane
officer. Weather inexcusable.

"26th. — ^All hope of hearing from the Cap-
tain has been abandoned. We have sacrificed
everything to save him ; but now, if we could
procure the loan of a mast and some sails, we
should proceed on our voyage. Mr. Martin
has knocked the coxswain overboard for
sneezing. He is an experienced seaman, a
capable officer, and a Christian gentleman-
damn his eyes! Weather tormenting.

"27th. — ^Another inspection of this book by
Mr. Martin. Farewell, vain world I Break it
gently to my aunt in Tottenham Court Road."

In the concluding sentences of this record,
as it now lies before me, the handwriting is
not very legible: they were penned under cir-
cumstances singularly unfavorable. Mr.
Martin stood behind me with his eyes fixed
on the page; and in order to secure a better
view, had twisted the machinery of the engine
he called his hand into the hair of my head,
depressing that globe to such an extent that
my nose was flattened against the surface of
the table, and I had no small difficulty in dis-
cerning the lines through my eyebrows. I was
not accustomed to writing in that position : it

252 THE COLLECTED WORKS

had not been taught in the only school that I
ever attended. I therefore felt justified in
bringing the record to a somewhat abrupt
close, and immediately went on deck with
Mr. Martin, he preceding me up the com-
panion-stairs on foot, I following, not on
horseback, but on my own, the connection be-
tween us being maintained without important
alteration.

Arriving on deck, I thought it advisable, in
the interest of peace and quietness, to pursue
him in the same manner to the side of the
ship, where I parted from him forever with
many expressions of regret, which might have
been heard at a considerable distance.

Of the subsequent fate of the Bonny clabber,
I can only say that the log-book from which
I have quoted was found some years later in
the stomach of a whale, along with some
shreds of clothing, a few buttons and several
decayed life-belts. It contained only one new
entry, in a straggling handwriting, as if it had
been penned in the dark:

*'july2th foundered svivors rescude by wale
wether stuffy no nues from capting trowtbeck
Sammle martin cheef Ofcer."

Let us now take a retrospective glance at
the situation. The ship Nupple-duck, (Aber-

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 253

south, master) had, it will be remembered,
gone down with all on board except me. I had
escaped on the ship Bonnyclabber (Trout-
beck) which I had quitted owing to a mis-
understanding with the chief officer, and was
now unattached. That is how matters stood
when, rising on an unusually high wave, and
casting my eye in the direction of Tottenham
Court Road — that is, backward along the
course pursued by the Bonnyclabber and to-
ward the spot at which the Nupple-duck had
been swallowed up — I saw a quantity of what
appeared to be wreckage. It turned out to be
some of the stuff that we had thrown over-
board under a misapprehension. The several
articles had been compiled and, so to speak,
carefully edited. They were, in fact, lashed
together, forming a raft. On a stool in the
center of it — not, apparently navigating it, but
rather with the subdued and dignified bearing
of a passenger, sat Captain Abersouth, of the
Nupple-duck, reading a novel.

Our meeting was not cordial. He remem-
bered me as a man of literary taste superior to
his own and harbored resentment, and
although he made no opposition to my taking
passage with him I could see that his acquies-
cence v^as due rather to his muscular in-

254 THE COLLECTED WORKS

feriority than to the circumstance that I was
damp and taking cold. Merely acknowledg-
ing his presence with a nod as I climbed
abroad, I seated myself and inquired if he
would care to hear the concluding stanzas of
"Naseby Fight."

"No," he replied, looking up from his
novel, "no, Claude Reginald Gump, writer of
sea stories, I've done with you. When you
sank the Nupple-duck some days ago you
probably thought that you had made an end
of me. That was clever of you, but I came to
the surface and followed the other ship — the
one on which you escaped. It was I that the
sailor saw from the masthead. I saw him see
me. It was for me that all that stuff was hove
overboard. Good — I made it into this raft.
It was, I think, the next day that I passed the
floating body of a man whom I recognized as
my old friend Billy Troutbeck — he used to
be a cook on a man-o'-war. It gives me pleas-
ure to be the means of saving your life, but
I eschew you. The moment that we reach port
our paths part. You remember that in the
very first sentence of this story you began to
drive my ship, the Nupple-duck, on to a reef
of coral."

I was compelled to confess that this was

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 255

true, and he continued his inhospitable re-
proaches:

^'Before you had written half a column you
sent her to the bottom, with me and the crew.
But you — you escaped."

"That is true," I replied; "I cannot deny
that the facts are correctly stated."

"And in a story before that, you took me
and my mates of the ship Camel into the heart
of the South Polar Sea and left us frozen dead
in the ice, like flies in amber. But you did
not leave yourself there — you escaped."

"Really, Captain," I said, "your memory is
singularly accurate, considering the many
hardships that you have had to undergo ; many
a man would have gone mad."

"And a long time before that," Captain
Abersouth resumed, after a pause, more, ap-
parently, to con his memory than to enjoy my
good opinion of it, "you lost me at sea — look
here ; I didn't read anything but George Eliot
at that time, but I'm told that you lost me at
sea in the Mudlark. Have I been misin-
formed?"

I could not say he had been misinformed.

"You yourself escaped on that occasion, I
think."

It was true. Being usually the hero of my

256 THE COLLECTED WORKS

own stories, I commonly do manage to live
through one, in order to figure to advantage
in the next. It is from artistic necessity: no
reader would take much interest in a hero
who was dead before the beginning of the tale.
I endeavored to explain this to Captain Aber-
south. He shook his head.

"No," said he, "it's cowardly, that's the way
I look at it."

Suddenly an effulgent idea began to dawn
upon me, and I let it have its way until my
mind was perfectly luminous. Then I rose
from my seat, and frowning down into the up-
turned face of my accuser, spoke in severe and
rasping accents thus:

"Captain Abersouth, in the various perils
you and I have encountered together in the
classical literature of the period, if I have
always escaped and you have always perished;
if I lost you at sea in the Mudlark, froze you
into the ice at the South Pole in the Camel
and drowned you in the Nupple-duck, pray
be good enough to tell me whom I have the
honor to address."

It was a blow to the poor man: no one was
ever so disconcerted. Flinging aside his
novel, he put up his hands and began to
scratch his head and think. It was beautiful

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 25T

to see him think, but it seemed to distress him
and pointing significantly over the side of the
raft I suggested as delicately as possible that
it was time to act. He rose to his feet and fix-
ing upon me a look of reproach which I shall
remember as long as I can, cast himself into
the deep. As to me — I escaped.

258 THE COLLECTED WORKS

A CARGO OF CAT

ON the 1 6th day of June, 1874, the
ship Mary Jane sailed from
Malta, heavily laden with cat.
This cargo gave us a good deal of
trouble. It was not in bales, but had been
dumped into the hold loose. Captain Doble,
who had once commanded a ship that carried
coals, said he had found that plan the best.
When the hold was full of cat the hatch was
battened down and we felt good. Unfortun-
ately the mate, thinking the cats would be
thirsty, introduced a hose into one of the
hatches and pumped in a considerable quant-
ity of water, and the cats of the lower levels
were all drowned.

You have seen a dead cat in a pond : you re-
member its circumference at the waist. Water
multiplies the magnitude of a dead cat by
ten. On the first day out, it was observed that
the ship was much strained. She was three
feet wider than usual and as much as ten feet
shorter. The convexity of her deck was visibly

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 259

augmented fore and aft, but she turned up at
both ends. Her rudder was clean out of water
and she would answer the helm only when
running directly against a strong breeze: the
rudder, when perverted to one side, would
rub against the wind and slew her around;
and then she wouldn't steer any more. Owing
to the curvature of the keel, the masts came to-
gether at the top, and a sailor who had gone
up the foremast got bewildered, came down
the mizzenmast, looked out over the stern at
the receding shores of Malta and shouted:
"Land, ho!" The ship's fastenings were all
giving way; the water on each side was lashed
into foam by the tempest of flying bolts that
she shed at every pulsation of the cargo. She
was quietly wrecking herself without assist-
ance from wind or wave, by the sheer internal
energy of feline expansion.

I went to the skipper about it. He was in
his favorite position, sitting on the deck, sup-
porting his back against the binnacle, making
a V of his legs, and smoking.

"Captain Doble," I said, respectfully touch-
ing my hat, which was really not worthy of
respect, "this floating palace is aflSicted with
curvature of the spine and is likewise greatly
swollen."

260 THE COLLECTED WORKS

Without raising his eyes he courteously
acknowledged my presence by knocking the
ashes from his pipe.

"Permit me, Captain," I said, with simple
dignity, "to repeat that this ship is much
swollen."

"If that is true," said the gallant mariner,
reaching for his tobacco pouch, "I think it
would be as well to swab her down with lini-
ment. There's a bottle of it in my cabin. Bet-
ter suggest it to the mate."

"But, Captain, there is no time for em-
pirical treatment; some of the planks at the
water line have started."

The skipper rose and looked out over the
stern, toward the land ; he fixed his eyes on the
foaming wake; he gazed into the water to
starboard and to port. Then he said:

"My friend, the whole darned thing has
started."

Sadly and silently I turned from that ob-
durate man and walked forward. Suddenly
"there was a burst of thunder sound!" The
hatch that had held down the cargo was flung
whirling into space and sailed in the air
like a blown leaf. Pushing upward through
the hatchway was a smooth, square column of
cat. Grandly and impressively it grew —

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 261

slowly, serenely, majestically it rose toward
the welkin, the relaxing keel parting the mast-
heads to give it a fair chance. I have stood
at Naples and seen Vesuvius painting the
town red — from Catania have marked afar,
upon the flanks of iEtna, the lava's awful pur-
suit of the astonished rooster and the despair-
ing pig. The fiery flow from Kilauea's crater,
thrusting itself into the forests and licking the
entire country clean, is as familiar to me as
my mother-tongue. I have seen glaciers, a
thousand years old and quite bald, heading
for a valley full of tourists at the rate of an
inch a month. I have seen a saturated solu-
tion of mining camp going down a mountain
river, to make a sociable call on the valley
farmers. I have stood behind a tree on the
battle-field and seen a compact square mile of
armed men moving with irresistible mo-
mentum to the rear. Whenever anything
grand in magnitude or motion is billed to
appear I commonly manage to beat my way
into the show, and in reporting it I am a man
of unscrupulous veracity; but I have seldom
observed anything like that solid gray column
of Maltese cat!

It is unnecessary to explain, I suppose, that
each individual grimalkin in the outfit, with

262 THE COLLECTED WORKS

that readiness of resource which distinguishes
the species, had grappled with tooth and nail
as many others as it could hook on to. This
preserved the formation. It made the column
so stiff that when the ship rolled (and the
Mary Jane was a devil to roll) it swayed
from side to side like a mast, and the Mate
said if it grew much taller he would have to
order it cut away or it would capsize us.

Some of the sailors went to work at the
pumps, but these discharged nothing but fur.
Captain Doble raised his eyes from his toes
and shouted: "Let go the anchor!" but being
assured that nobody was touching it, apolo-
gized and resumed his revery. The chaplain
said if there were no objections he would like
to offer up a prayer, and a gambler from
Chicago, producing a pack of cards, proposed
to throw round for the first jack. The par-
son's plan was adopted, and as he uttered the
final "amen," the cats struck up a hymn.

All the living ones were now above deck,
and every mother's son of them sang. Each
had a pretty fair voice, but no ear. Nearly all
their notes in the upper register were more or
less cracked and disobedient. The remarkable
thing about the voices was their range. In
that crowd were cats of seventeen octaves, and

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 263

the average could not have been less than
twelve.

Number of cats, as per invoice 127,000

Estimated number dead swellers... 6,000

Total songsters 121,000

Average number octaves per cat. . . , 12

Total octaves 1,452,000

It v^as a great concert. It lasted three days
and nights, or, counting each night as seven
days, twenty-four days altogether, and we
could not go below for provisions. At the
end of that time the cook came for'd shaking
up some beans in a hat, and holding a large
knife.

"Shipmates," said he, "we have done all
that mortals can do. Let us now draw lots."
We were blindfolded in turn, and drew,
but just as the cook was forcing the fatal
black bean upon the fattest man, the concert
closed with a suddenness that waked the man
on the lookout. A moment later every grimal-
kin relaxed his hold on his neighbors, the
column lost its cohesion and, with 121,000
dull, sickening thuds that beat as one, the
whole business fell to the deck. Then with a
wild farewell wail that feline host sprang

264 BIERCE'S COLLECTED WORKS

spitting into the sea and struck out southward
for the African shore!

The southern extension of Italy, as every
schoolboy knows, resembles in shape an
enormous boot. We had drifted within sight
of it. The cats in the fabric had spied it,
and their alert imaginations were instantly
affected with a lively sense of the size, weight
and probable momentum of its flung boot-
jack.

"ON WITH THE DANCE I"
A REVIEW

THE PRUDE IN LETTERS AND LIFE

IT is deserving of remark and censure
that American literature is become
shockingly moral. There is not a doubt
of it; our writers, if accused, would
make explicit confession that morality is their
only fault — ^morality in the strict and specific
sense. Far be it from me to disparage and
belittle this decent tendency to ignore the
largest side of human nature, and liveliest
element of literary interest. It has an emin-
ence of its own; if it is not great art,
it is at least great folly — a superior sort
of folly to which none of the masters of
letters has ever attained. Not Shakspeare,
nor Cervantes, nor Goethe, nor Moliere, nor
— no, not even Rabelais — ever achieved that
shining pinnacle of propriety to which the
latter-day American has aspired, by turning
his back upon nature's broad and fruitful
levels and his eyes upon the passionate altit-

268 THE COLLECTED WORKS

udes where, throned upon congenial ice,
Miss Nancy sits to censure letters, putting
the Muses into petticoats and affixing a fig-
leaf upon Truth. Ours are an age and coun-
try of expurgated editions, emasculated art,
and social customs that look over the top of a
fan.

Lo! prude-eyed Primdimity, mother of Gush,
Sex-conscious, Invoking the difficult blush;
At vices that plague us and sins that beset
Sternly directing her private lorgnette,
Whose lenses, self -searching instinctive for sin,
Make image without of the fancies within.
Itself, If examined, would show us, alas!
A tiny transparency (French) on each glass.

Now, prudery in letters, if it would but
have the goodness not to coexist with prudery
in life, might be suffered with easy fortitude,
inasmuch as one needs not read what one does
not like; and between the license of the dear
old bucks above mentioned, and the severities
of Miss Nancy Howells, and Miss Nancy
James, Jr., of t'other school, there is latitude
for gratification of individual taste. But it
occurs that a literature rather accurately re-
flects all the virtues and other vices of its
period and country, and its tendencies are but

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 269

the matchings of thought with action. Hence,
we may reasonably expect to find — and in-
dubitably shall find — certain well-marked
correspondences between the literary faults
which it pleases our writers to commit and the
social crimes which it pleases the Adversary
to see their readers commit. Within the cur-
rent lustrum the prudery which had already,
for some seasons, been achieving a vinegar-
visaged and corkscrew-curled certain age in
letters, has invaded the ball-room, and is in-
festing it in quantity. Supportable, because
evitable, in letters, it is here, for the con-
trary reason, insufferable ; for one must dance
and enjoy one's self whether one like it or not.
Pleasure, I take it, is a duty not to be shirked
at the command of disinclination. Youth, fol-
lowing the bent of inherited instinct, and loy-
ally conforming himself to the centuries, must
shake a leg in the dance, and Age, from emul-
ation and habit, and for denial of rheumatic
incapacity, must occasionally twist his heel
though he twist it off in the performance.
Dance we must, and dance we shall; that is
settled ; the question of magnitude is. Shall we
caper jocundly with the good grace of an easy
conscience, o^ submit to shuffle half-heartedly
with a sense of shame, wincing under the slow

270 THE COLLECTED WORKS

stroke of our own rebuking eye? To this mo-
mentous question let us now intelligently
address our minds, sacredly pledged, as be-
comes lovers of truth, to its determination in
the manner most agreeable to our desires ; and
if, in pursuance of this laudable design, we
have the unhappiness to bother the bunions
decorating the all-pervading feet of the good
people whose deprecations are voiced in The
Dance of Death and the clamatory literature
of which that blessed volume was the honored
parent, upon their own corns be it; they should
not have obtruded these eminences

when youth and pleasure meet
To chase the glowing hours with flying feet.

What, therefore, whence, and likewise why,
is dancing? From what flower of nature,
fertilized by what pollen of circumstance or
necessity, is it the fruit? Let us go to the root
of the matter.

II

THE BEATING OF THE BLOOD
Nature takes a childish delight in tireless

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 271

repetition. The days repeat themselves, the
tibes ebb and flow, the tree sways forth and
back. This world is intent upon recurrences.
Not the pendulum of a clock is more persist-
ent of iteration than are all existing things;
periodicity is the ultimate law and largest ex-
planation of the universe — to do it over again
the one insatiable ambition of all that is.
Everything vibrates; through vibration alone
do the senses discern it. We are not provided
with means of cognizance of what is absolutely
at rest; impressions come in waves. Recurr-
ence, recurrence, and again recurrence — that
is the sole phenomenon. With what fealty we
submit us to the law which compels the
rhythm and regularity to our movement —
that makes us divide up passing time into
brief equal intervals, marking them off by
some method of physical notation, so that our
senses may apprehend them! In all we do we
unconsciously mark time like a clock, the
leader of an orchestra with his baton only
more perfectly than the smith with his ham-
mer, or the woman with her needle, because
his hand is better assisted by his ear, less em-
barrassed with impedimenta. The pedestrian
impelling his legs and the idler twiddling his
thumbs are endeavoring, each in his uncon-

272 THE COLLECTED WORKS

scious way, to beat time to some inaudible
music; and the graceless lout, sitting cross-
legged in a horse-car, manages the affair with
his toe.

The more intently we labor, the more in-
tensely do we become absorbed in labor's
dumb song, until with body and mind engaged
in the ecstacy of repetition, we resent an inter-
ruption of our work as we do a false note in
music, and are mightily enamored of ourselves
afterward for the power of application which
was simply inability to desist. In this rhythm
of toil is to be found the charm of industry.
Toil has in itself no spell to conjure with,
but its recurrences of molecular action,
cerebral and muscular, are as delightful as
rhyme.

Such of our pleasures as require movements
equally rhythmic with those entailed by labor
are almost equally agreeable, with the added
advantage of being useless. Dancing, which
is not only rhythmic movement, pure and sim-
ple, undebased with any element of utility, but
is capable of performance under conditions
positively baneful, is for these reasons the most
engaging of them all ; and if it were but one-
half as wicked as the prudes have endeavored
by method of naughty suggestion to niake it

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 278

would lack of absolute bliss nothing but the
other half.

This ever active and unabatable something
within us which compels us always to be
marking time we may call, for want of a better
name, the instinct of rhythm. It is the aesthetic
principle of our nature. Translated into words
it has given us poetry; into sound, music; into
motion, dancing. Perhaps even painting may
be referred to it, space being the correlative of
time, and color the correlative of tone. We
are fond of arranging our minute intervals of
time into groups. We find certain of these
groups highly agreeable, while others are no
end unpleasant. In the former there is a sin-
gular regularity to be observed, which led
hard-headed old Leibnitz to the theory that
our delight in music arises from an inherent
affection for mathematics. Yet musicians have
hitherto obtained but indifferent recognition
for feats of calculation, nor have the singing
and playing of renowned mathematicians been
unanimously commended by good judges.

Music so intensifies and excites the instinct
of rhythm that a strong volition is required to
repress its physical expression. The univers-
ality of this is well illustrated by the legend,
found in some shape in many countries and

274 THE COLLECTED WORKS

languages, of the boy with the fiddle who com-
pels king, cook, peasant, clown, and all that
kind of people, to follow him through the
land; and in the myth of the Pied Piper of
Hamelin we discern abundant reason to think
the instinct of rhythm an attribute of rats.
Soldiers march so much livelier with music
than without that it has been found a tolerably
good substitute for the hope of plunder.
When the foot-falls are audible, as on the deck
of a steamer, walking has an added pleasure,
and even the pirate, with gentle consideration
for the universal instinct, suffers his van-
quished foeman to walk the plank.

Dancing is simply marking time with the
body, as an accompaniment to music, though
the same — without the music — is done with
only the head and forefinger in a New Eng-
land meeting-house at psalm time. (The
peculiar dance named in honor of St. Vitus
is executed with or without music, at the op-
tion of the musician.) But the body is a
clumsy piece of machinery, requiring some
attention and observation to keep it accurately
in time to the fiddling. The smallest divers-
ion of the thought, the briefest relaxing of the
mind, is fatal to the performance. 'Tis as easy
to fix attention on a sonnet of Shakspeare

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 275

while working at whist as gloat upon your
partner while waltzing. It can not be in-
telligently, appreciatively, and adequately ac-
complished— crede expertum.

On the subject of poetry, Emerson says :
"Metre begins with pulse-beat, and the length
of lines in songs and poems is determined by
the inhalation and exhalation of the lungs,"
and this really goes near to the root of the
matter; albeit we might derive therefrom the
unsupported inference that a poet "fat and
scant of breath" would write in lines of a foot
each, while the more able-bodied bard, with
the capacious lungs of a pearl-diver, would
deliver himself all across his page, with "the
spacious volubility of a drumming deca-
syllabon."

While the heart, working with alternate
contraction and dilatation, sends the blood in-
termittently through the brain, and the outer
world apprises us of its existence only by suc-
cessive impulses, it must result that our sense
of things will be rhythmic. The brain being
alternately stimulated and relaxed we must
think — as we feel — in waves, apprehending
nothing continuously, and incapable of a con-
sciousness that is not divisible into units of
perception of which we make mental record

276 THE COLLECTED WORKS

and physical sign. That is why we dance.
That is why we can, may, must, will, and shall
dance, and the gates of Philistia shall not pre-
vail against us.

La valse legere, la valse legere,

The free, the bright, the debonair,

That stirs the strong, and fires the fair

With joy like wine of vintage rare —

That lends the swiftly circling pair

A short surcease of killing care,

With music in the dreaming air,

With elegance and grace to spare.

Vive! vive la valse, la valse legere!

— George Jessop,

III

THERE ARE CORNS IN EGYPT

Our civilization — wise child! — knows its
father in the superior civilization whose co-
lossal vestiges are found along the Nile. To
those, then, who see in the dance a civilizing
art, it can not be wholly unprofitable to glance
at this polite accomplishment as it existed
among the ancient Egyptians, and was by
them transmitted — with various modifications,
but preserving its essentials of identity — to

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 277

other nations and other times. And here we
have first to note that, as in all the nations of
antiquity, the dance in Egypt was principally
a religious ceremony; the pious old boys that
builded the pyramids executed their jigs as
an act of worship. Diodorus Siculus informs
us that Osiris, in his proselyting travels among
the peoples surrounding Egypt — for Osiris
was what we would call a circuit preacher —
was accompanied by dancers male and dancers
female. From the sculptures on some of the
oldest tombs of Thebes it is seen that the
dances there depicted did not greatly differ
from those in present favor in the same region ;
although it seems a fair inference from the
higher culture and refinement of the elder
period that they were distinguished by graces
correspondingly superior. That dances hav-
ing the character of religious rites were not
always free from an element that we would
term indelicacy, but which their performers
and witnesses probably considered the com-
mendable exuberance of zeal and devotion,
is manifest from the following passage of
Herodotus, in which reference is made to the
festival of Bubastis:

Men and women come sailing all together, vast
numbers in each boat, many of the women with casta-

278 THE COLLECTED WORKS

nets, which they strike, while some of the men pipe dur-
ing the whole period of the voyage; the remainder of
the voyagers, male and female, sing the while, and make
a clapping with their hands. When they arrive opposite
to any town on the banks of the stream they approach
the shore, and while some of the women continue to play
and sing, others call aloud to the females of the place
and load them with abuse, a certain number dancing
and others standing up, uncovering themselves. Proceed-
ing in this way all along the river course they reach
Bubastis, where they celebrate the feast with abundant
sacrifice.

Of the mysteries of Isis and Osiris, in which
dancing played an important part, the charac-
ter of the ceremonies is matter of dim conject-
ure; but from the hints that have come down
to us like significant shrugs and whispers from
a discreet past, which could say a good deal
more if it had a mind to, I hasten to infer that
they were no better than they should have
been.

Naturally the dances for amusement of
others were regulated in movement and gest-
ure to suit the taste of patrons: for the re-
fined, decency and moderation ; for the wicked,
a soupgon of the other kind of excellence. In
the latter case the buffoon, an invariable ad-
junct, committed a thousand extravagances,
and was a dear, delightful, naughty ancient

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 279

Egyptian buffoon. These dances were per-
formed by both men and women; sometimes
together, more frequently in separate parties.
The men seem to have confined themselves
mostly to exercises requiring strength of leg
and arm. The figures on the tombs represent
men in lively and vigorous postures, some in
attitude preliminary to leaping, others in the
air. This feature of agility would be a nov-
elty in the oriental dances of to-day; the in-
dolent male spectator being satisfied with a
slow, voluptuous movement congenial to his
disposition. When, on the contrary, the per-
formance of our prehistoric friends was gov-
erned and determined by ideas of grace, there
were not infrequently from six to eight music-
al instruments, the harp, guitar, double-pipe,
lyre, and tambourine of the period being most
popular, and these commonly accompanied by
a clapping of hands to mark the time»

As with the Greeks, dancers were had in at
dinner to make merry; for although the up-
per-class Egyptian was forbidden to practice
the art, either as an accomplishment or for the
satisfaction of his emotional nature, it was not
considered indecorous to hire professionals to
perform before him and his female and young.
The she dancer usually habited herself in a

280 THE COLLECTED WORKS

loose, flowing robe, falling to the ankles and
bound at the waist, while about the hips w^as
fastened a narrow, ornate girdle. This cos-
tume— in point of opacity imperfectly su-
perior to a gentle breeze — is not always dis-
cernible in the sculptures; but it is charitably
believed that the pellucid garment, being
merely painted over the figures, has been
ravished away by the hand of Time — the
wretch !

One of the dances was a succession of pleas-
ing attitudes, the hands and arms rendering
important assistance — the body bending back-
ward and forward and swaying laterally, the
figurante sometimes half-kneeling, and in that
position gracefully posturing, and again bal-
anced on one foot, the arms and hands waving
slowly in time to the music. In another dance,
the pirouette and other figures dear to the
bald-headed beaux of the modern play-house,
were practiced in the familiar way. Four
thousand years ago, the senses of the young
ancient Egyptian — wild, heady lad! — were
kicked into confusion by the dark-skinned
belle of the ballet, while senility, with dimmed
eyes, rubbed its dry hands in feverish ap-
proval at the self-same feat. Dear, dear, but
it was a bad world four thousand years ago I

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 281

Sometimes they danced in pairs, men with
men and women with women, indifferently,
the latter arrangement seeming to us prefer-
able by reason of the women's conspicuously
superior grace and almost equal agility; for it
is in evidence on the tombs that tumblers and
acrobats were commonly of the softer sex.
Some of the attitudes were similar to those
which drew from Socrates the ungallant re-
mark that women were capable of learning
anything which you will that they should
know. The figures in this pas de deux appear
frequently to have terminated in what child-
ren, with their customary coarseness of
speech, are pleased to call "wringing the dish-
clout" — clasping the hands, throwing the arms
above the head and turning rapidly, each as
on a pivot, without loosing the hands of the
other, and resting again in position.

Sometimes, with no other music than the
percussion of hands, a man would execute a
pas seul, which it is to be presumed he en-
joyed. Again, with a riper and better sense
of musical methods, the performer accompan-
ied himself, or, as in this case it usually was,
herself, on the double-pipes, the guitar or the
tambourine, while the familiar hand-clapping
was done by attendants. A step not unlike that

282 THE COLLECTED WORKS

of the abominable clog-dance of the "variety"
stage and "music hall" of the present day con-
sisted in striking the heel of first one foot and
then the other, the hands and arms being em-
ployed to diminish the monotony of the move-
ment. For amusement and instruction of the
vulgar, buffoons in herds of ten or more in-
fested the streets, hopping and posing to the
sound of a drum.

As illustrating the versatility of the dance,
its wide capacities of adaptation to human
emotional needs, I may mention here the pro-
cession of women to the tomb of a friend or
relative. Punishing the tambourine or dara-
booka drum, and bearing branches of palm
or other symbolic vegetables, these sprightly
mourners passed through the streets with
songs and dances which, under the circum-
stances, can hardly have failed eminently to
gratify the person so fortunate as to have his
memory honored by so delicate and appro-
priate observance.

IV

A REEF IN THE GABARDINE
The early Jew danced ritually and socially.

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 283

Some of his dances and the customs connected
therewith were of his own devising; others he
picked up in Egypt, the latter, no doubt, being
more firmly fixed in his memory by the necess-
ity of practicing them — albeit behind the
back of Moses — while he had them still fresh
in his mind; for he would naturally resort to
every human and inhuman device to wile away
the dragging decades consumed in tracing the
labyrinthine sinuosities of his course in the
wilderness. When a man has assurance that
he will not be permitted to arive at the point
for which he set out, perceiving that every
step forward is a step wasted, he will pretty
certainly use his feet to a better purpose than
walking. Clearly, at a time when all the
chosen people were Wandering Jews they
would dance all they knew how. We know
that they danced in worship of the Golden
Calf, and that previously "Miriam the
prophetess, sister of Aaron, took a timbrel in
her hand; and all the women went out after
her with timbrels and with dances." And
ever so many generations before, Laban com-
plained to Jacob that Jacob had stolen away
instead of letting him send him off with songs
and mirth and music on the tabret and harp,
a method of speeding the parting guest which

284 THE COLLECTED WORKS

would naturally include dancing, although
the same is not of explicit record.

The religious ceremonies of the Jews had
not at all times the restraint and delicacy
which it is to be wished the Lord had exacted,
for we read of King David himself dancing
before the Ark in a condition so nearly nude
as greatly to scandalize the daughter of Saul.
By the way, this incident has been always a
stock argument for the extinction and decent
interment of the unhappy anti-dancer. Con-
ceding the necessity of his extinction, I am yet
indisposed to attach much weight to the
Davidian precedent, for it does not appear
that he was acting under divine command, di-
rectly or indirectly imparted, and whenever
he followed the best of his own sweet will
David had a notable knack at going wrong.
Perhaps the best value of the incident con-
sists in the evidence it supplies that dancing
was not forbidden — save possibly by divine
injunction — to the higher classes of Jews; for
unless we are to suppose the dancing of David
to have been the mere clumsy capering of a
loutish mood (a theory which our respect for
royalty, even when divested of its imposing
externals, forbids us to entertain) we are
bound to assume previous instruction and

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 285

practice in the art. We have, moreover, the
Roman example of the daughter of Herodias,
whose dancing before Herod was so admir-
ably performed that she was suitably rewarded
with a testimonial of her step-father's esteem.
To these examples many more might be
added, showing by cumulative evidence that
among the ancient people whose religion was
good enough for us to adopt and improve,
dancing was a polite and proper accomplish-
ment, although not always decorously executed
on seasonable occasion.

ENTER A TROUPE OF ANCIENTS, DANCING

The nearly oldest authentic human records
now decipherable are the cuneiform inscrip-
tions from the archives of Assurbanipal,
translated by the late George Smith, of the
British Museum; and in them we find abun-
dant reference to the dance, but must content
ourselves with a single one:

The kings of Arabia who, against my agreement,
sinned; whom in the midst of battle alive I had captured
in h^nd, tQ nj^ke that Bltrighiti. Heavy burdens J

286 THE COLLECTED WORKS

caused them to carry, and I caused them to take . . .
building its brick-work . . . with dancing and
music; . . . with joy and shouting, from the found-
ation to its roof, I built . . .

A Mesopotamian king, who had the genius
to conceive the dazzling idea of communic-
ating with the readers of this distant genera-
tion by taking impressions of carpet- tacks on
cubes of unbaked clay is surely entitled to a
certain veneration; and when he associates
dancing with such commendable actions as
making porters of his royal captives it is not
becoming in us meaner mortals to set up a
contrary opinion. Indeed, nothing can be
more certain than that the art of dancing was
not regarded by the ancients generally in the
light of a frivolous accomplishment, nor its
practice a thing wherewith to shoo away a
tedious hour. In their minds it evidently had
a certain dignity and elevation; so much so
that they associated it with their ideas (toler-
ably correct ones, on the whole,) of art, har-
mony, beauty, truth and religion. With them,
dancing bore a relation to walking and the
ordinary movements of the limbs, similar to
that which poetry bears to prose; and as our
own Emerson — himself something of an an-

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 287

cient — defines poetry as the piety of the intel-
lect, so Homer would doubtless have defined
dancing as the devotion of the body if he had
had the unspeakable advantage of a training in
the Emerson school of epigram. Such a view
of it is natural to the unsophisticated pagan
mind, and to all minds of clean, wholesome,
and simple understanding. It is only the in-
tellect that has been subjected to the strain of
overwrought religious enthusiasm of the more
sombre sort that can discern a lurking devil
in the dance, or anything but an exhilarating
and altogether delightful outward manifesta-
tion of an inner sense of harmony, joy and
well-being. Under the stress of morbid feel-
ing, or the overstrain of religious excitement,
coarsely organized natures see or create some-
thing gross and prurient in things intrinsically
sweet and pure; and it happens that when
the dance has fallen to their shaping and di-
rection, as in religious rites, then it has re-
ceived its most objectionable development and
perversion. But the grossness of dances de-
vised by the secular mind for purposes of
aesthetic pleasure is all in the censorious critic,
who deserves the same kind of rebuke admin-
istered by Dr. Johnson to Boswell, who asked
the Doctor if he considered a certain nude

288 THE COLLECTED WORKS

statue immodest. "No, sir; but your question
is."

It would be an unfortunate thing, indeed,
if the "prurient prudes" of the meeting-houses
were permitted to make the laws by which
society should be governed. The same un-
happy psychological condition which makes
the dance an unclean thing in their jaundiced
eyes renders it impossible for them to enjoy
art or literature when the subject is natural,
the treatment free and joyous. The ingenuity
that can discover an indelicate provocative in
the waltz will have no difficulty in snouting
out all manner of uncleanliness in Shak-
speare, Chaucer, Boccacio — nay, even in the
New Testament. It would detect an unpleas-
ant suggestiveness in the Medicean Venus, and
two in the Dancing Faun. To all such the
ordinary functions of life are impure; the
natural man and woman things to blush at; all
the economies of nature full of shocking im-
proprieties.

In the Primitive Church dancing was a re-
ligious rite, no less than it was under the older
dispensation among the Jews. On the eve of
sacred festivals, the young people were accust-
omed to assemble, sometimes before the
church door, sometimes in the choir or nave of

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 289

the church, and dance and sing hymns in
honor of the saint whose festival it was. Easter
Sunday, especially, was so celebrated; and
rituals of a comparatively modern date con-
tain the order in which it is appointed that the
dances are to be performed, and the words of
the hymns to the music of which the youthful
devotees flung up their pious heels. But I
digress.

In Plato's time the Greeks held that dancing
awakened and preserved in the soul — as I do
not doubt that it does — the sentiment of har-
mony and proportion; and in accordance with
this idea Simonides, with a happy knack at
epigram, defined dances as "poems in dumb-
show.''

In his Republic Plato classifies the Grecian
dances as domestic, designed for relaxation
and amusement; military, to promote strength
and activity in battle; and religious, to accom-
pany the sacred songs at pious festivals. To
the last class belongs the dance which Theseus
is said to have instituted on his return from
Crete, after having abated the Minotaur nuis-
ance. At the head of a noble band of youth,
this public-spirited reformer of abuses himself
executed his dance. Theseus as a dancing-
master does not much fire the imagination, it

290 THE COLLECTED WORKS

is true, but the incident has its value and pur-
pose in this dissertation. Theseus called his
dance Geranos, or the *'Crane," because its
figures resembled those described by that fowl
aflight; and Plutarch fancied he discovered in
it a meaning which one does not so readily
discover in Plutarch's explanation.
It is certain that, in the time of Anacreon,*

*It may be noted here that the popular conception of
this poet as a frivolous sensualist is unsustalned by evid-
ence and repudiated by all having knowledge of the
matter. Although love and wine were his constant
themes, there is good ground for the belief that he wrote
of them with greater abandon than he indulged in them —
a not uncommon practice of the poet-folk, by the way,
and one to which those who sing of deeds of arms are
perhaps especially addicted. The great age which Anac-
reon attained points to a temperate life; and he more
than once denounces intoxication with as great zeal as a
modern reformer who has eschewed the flagon for the
trencher. According to Anacreon, drunkenness is "the
vice of barbarians;" though, for the matter of that, it is
difficult to say what achievable vice is not. In Ode LXII,
he sings:

Fill me, boy, as deep a draught

As e'er was filled, as e'er was quaffed;

But let the water amply flow

To cool the grape's intemperate glow.

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 291

For though the bowl's the grave of sadness,

Ne'er let it be the birth of madness;

No! banish from our board to-night

The revelries of rude delight;

To Scythians leave these v^ild excesses,

Ours be the joy that soothes and blesses!

And, while the temperate bowl we wreathe,

In concert let our voices breathe,

Beguiling every hour along

With harmony of soul and song.

Maximus of Tyre, speaking of Polycrates the Tyrant
'(tyrant, be it remembered, meant only usurper, not op-
pressor) considered the happiness of that potentate se-
cure because he had a powerful navy and such a friend
as Anacreon — the word navy naturally suggesting cold
water, and cold water, Anacreon.

the Greeks loved the dance. That poet, with
frequent repetition, felicitates himself that age
has not deprived him of his skill in it. In Ode
LIII, he declares that in the dance he renews
his youth :

When I behold the festive train

Of dancing youth, I'm young again.

And let me, while the wild and young
Trip the mazy dance along.
Fling my heap of years away.
And be as wild, as young, as they.

— Moore.

292 THE COLLECTED WORKS

And so in Ode LIX, which seems to be a
vintage hymn :

When he whose verging years decline
As deep into the vale as mine,
When he inhales the vintage cup,
His feet, new-winged, from earth spring up,
And, as he dances, the fresh air
Plays, whispering, through his silvery hair.

— /^.

In Ode XLVII, he boasts that age has not
impaired his relish for, nor his power of in-
dulgence in, the feast and dance:

'Tis true my fading years decline,
Yet I can quaff the brimming wine
As deep as any stripling fair
Whose cheeks the flush of morning wear;
And if amidst the wanton crew
I'm called to wind the dance's clew,
Then shalt thou see this vigorous hand
Not faltering on the Bacchant's wand.

For, though my fading years decay —
Though manhood's prime hath passed away.
Like old Sllenus, sire divine,
With blushes borrowed from the wine
I'll wanton 'mid the dancing train,
And live my follies o'er again.

—Id,

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 293

Cornelius Nepos, I think, mentions among
the admirable qualities of the great Epami-
nondas that he had an extraordinary talent
for music and dancing. Epaminondas accom-
plishing his jig must be accepted as a pleas-
ing and instructive figure in the history of the
dance.

Lucian says that a dancer must have some
skill as an actor, and some acquaintance with
mythology — the reason being that the dances
at the festivals of the gods partook of the char-
acter of pantomime, and represented the most
picturesque events and passages in the popul-
ar religion. Religious knowledge is happily
no longer regarded as a necessary qualifica-
tion for the dance; and, in point of fact, no-
thing is commonly more foreign to the minds
of those who excel in it.

It is related of Aristides the Just that he
danced at an entertainment given by Diony-
sius the Tyrant, and Plato, who was also a
guest, probably confronted him in the set.

The "dance of the wine-press," described
by Longinus, was originally modest and
proper, but seems to have become in the pro-
cess of time — and probably by the stealthy
participation of disguised prudes — a kind of
can- can.

294 THE COLLECTED WORKS

In the high-noon of human civilization —
in the time of Pericles at Athens — dancing
seems to have been regarded as a civilizing
and refining amusement in which the gravest
dignitaries and most renowned worthies joined
with indubitable alacrity, if problematic ad-
vantage. Socrates himself — at an advanced
age, too — ^was persuaded by the virtuous As-
pasia to cut his caper with the rest of them.

Horace (Ode IX, Book I,) exhorts the
youth not to despise the dance:

Nee dulcis amores
Sperne puer, neque tu choreas.

Which may be freely translated thus :

Boy, in Love's game don't miss a trick,
Nor be in the dance a walking stick.

In Ode IV, Book I, he says:

Jam Cytherea choros ducit, inminente Luna
Junctaeque Nymphis Gratiae decentes
Alterno terram quatiunt pede; etc.

At moonrise, Venus and her joyous band
Of Nymphs and Graces leg it o'er the land.

In Ode XXXVI, Book I (supposed to

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 295

have been written when Numida returned
from the war in Spain, with Augustus, and
referring to which an old commentator says:
"We may judge with how much tenderness
Horace loved his friends, when he celebrates
their return with sacrifices, songs, and
dances") Horace writes:

Cressa ne careat pulchra dies nota;

Neu promtae modus amphorae,

Neu morem in Salium sit requies pedum; etc.

Let not the day forego its mark,
Nor lack the wine-jug's honest bark;
Like Salian priests we'll toss our toes —
Choose partners for the dance — here goes!

It has been hastily inferred that, in the
time of Cicero, dancing was not held in good
repute among the Romans; but I prefer to
consider his ungracious dictum (in De Ami-
citia, I think,) ''Nemo sobrius saltaf^ — no
sober man dances — as merely the spiteful and
envious fling of a man who could not himself
dance, and am disposed to congratulate the
golden youth of the Eternal City on the
absence of the solemn, consequential and egot-
istic orator from their festivals and merry-
makings, whence his shining talents would

296 THE COLLECTED WORKS

have been so many several justifications for
his forcible extrusion. No doubt his emin-
ence procured him many invitations to balls
of the period, and some of these he probably
felt constrained to accept; but it is highly un-
likely that he was often solicited to dance;
he probably wiled away the tedious hours
of inaction by instructing the fibrous virgins
and gouty bucks in the principles of juris-
prudence. Cicero as a wall-flower is an
interesting object, and, turning to another
branch of bur subject, in this picturesque
attitude we leave him. Left talking.

VI

CAIRO REVISITED

Having glanced, briefly, and as through a
glass darkly, at the dance as it existed in the
earliest times of which we have knowledge in
the country whence, through devious and
partly obliterated channels, we derived much
of our civilization, let us hastily survey some
of its modern methods in the same region —
supplying thereby some small means of com-
parison to the reader who may care to note

vj

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 297

the changes undergone and the features pre-
served.

We find the most notable, if not the only,
purely Egyptian dancer of our time in the
Alme or Ghowazee. The former name is
derived from the original calling of this class
— that of reciting poetry to the inmates of the
harem; the latter they acquired by danc-
ing at the festivals of the Ghors, or Mem-
looks. Reasonably modest at first, the danc-
ing of the Alme became, in the course of
time, so conspicuously indelicate that great
numbers of the softer sex persuaded them-
selves to its acquirement and practice; and a
certain viceregal Prude once contracted the
powers of the whole Cairo contingent of
Awalim into the pent-up Utica of the town
of Esuch, some five hundred miles removed
from the viceregal dissenting eye. For a
brief season the order was enforced; then the
sprightly sinners danced out of bounds, and
their successors can now be found by the
foreign student of Egyptian morals without
the fatigue and expense of a long journey up
the Nile.

The professional dress of the Alme con-
sists of a short embroidered jacket, fitting
closely to the arms and back, but frankly un-

298 THE COLLECTED WORKS

reserved in front; long loose trousers of silk
sufficiently opaque somewhat to soften the
severity of the lower limbs; a Cashmere shawl
bound about the waist and a light turban of
muslin embroidered with gold. The long
black hair, starred with small coins, falls
abundantly over the shoulders. The eyelids
are sabled with kohl ; and such other paints,
oils, varnishes and dyestuffs are used as the
fair one — ^who is a trifle dark, by the way —
may have proved for herself, or accepted on
the superior judgment of her European sisters.
Altogether, the girl's outer and visible aspect
is not unattractive to the eye of the traveler,
however faulty to the eye of the trav&ler's
wife. When about to dance, the Alme puts
on a lighter and more diaphanous dress,
eschews her slippers, and with a slow and
measured step advances to the centre of the
room — her lithe figure undulating with a
grace peculiarly serpentile. The music is that
of a reed pipe or a tambourine — a number of
attendants assisting with castanets. Perhaps
the "argument" of her dance will be a love-
passage with an imaginary young Arab. The
coyness of a first meeting by chance, her grad-
ual warming into passion, their separation,
followed by her tears and dejection, the hope

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 299

of meeting soon again and, finally, the intoxic-
ation of being held once more in his arms —
all are delineated with a fidelity and detail
surprising to whatever of judgment the mas-
culine spectator may have the good fortune to
retain.

One of the prime favorites is the "wasp
dance," allied to the Tarantella. Although
less pleasing in motive than that described,
the wasp dance gives opportunity for move-
ments of even superior significance — or, as one
may say, suggestures. The girl stands in a
pensive posture, her hands demurely clasped
in front, her head poised a little on one side.
Suddenly a wasp is heard to approach, and by
her gestures is seen to have stung her on the
breast. She then darts hither and thither in
pursuit of that audacious insect, assuming all
manner of provoking attitudes, until, finally,
the wasp having been caught and miserably
exterminated, the girl resumes her innocent
smile and modest pose.

yii

JAPAN WEAR AND BOMBAY DUCKS
Throughout Asia, dancing is marked by

300 THE COLLECTED WORKS

certain characteristics which do not greatly
differ, save in degree, among the various
peoples who practice it. With few excep-
tions, it is confined to the superior sex, and
these ladies, I am sorry to confess, have not
derived as great moral advantage from the
monopoly as an advocate of dancing would
prefer to record.

Dancing — the rhythmical movement of the
limbs and body to music — is, as I have en-
deavored to point out, instinctive; hardly a
people, savage or refined, but has certain
forms of it. When, from any cause, the men
abstain from its execution it has commonly
not the character of grace and agility as its
dominant feature, but is distinguished by soft,
voluptuous movements, suggestive posturing,
and all the wiles by which the performer
knows she can best please the other sex; the
most forthright and effective means to that
commendable end being evocation of man's
baser nature. The Japanese men are anti-
dancers from necessity of costume, if nothing
else, and the effect is much the same as else-
where under the same conditions: the
women dance, the men gloat and the gods
grieve.

There are two kinds of dances in Japan : the

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 301

one not only lewd, but — to speak with accurate
adjustment of word to fact — beastly; in the
other grace is the dominating element, and
decency as cold as a snow-storm. Of the
former class, the "Chon Nookee" is the most
popular. It is, however, less a dance than an
exhibition, and its patrons are the wicked, the
dissolute and the European. It is commonly
given at some entertainment to which respect-
able women have not the condescension to be
invited — such as a dinner party of some
wealthy gentleman's gentlemen friends. The
dinner — served on the floor — having been im-
patiently tucked away, and the candies, cakes,
hot saki and other necessary addenda of a
Japanese dinner brought in, the "Chon
Nookee" is demanded, and with a modest
demeanor, worn as becomingly as if it were
their every-day habit, the performers glide in,
seating themselves coyly on the floor, in two
rows. Each dancing girl is appareled in such
captivating bravery as her purse can buy or
her charms exact. The folds of her vari-
colored gowns crossing her bosom makes
combinations of rich, warm hues, which it
were folly not to admire and peril to admire
too much. The faces of these girls are in
many instances exceedingly pretty, but with

302 THE COLLECTED WORKS

that natural — and, be it humbly submitted,
not very creditable — tendency of the sex to
revision and correction of nature's handiwork,
they plaster them with pigments dear to the
sign-painter, and temper the red glory of their
lips with a bronze preparation which the flat-
tered brass-founder would no doubt deem
kissable utterly. The music is made by beat-
ing a drum and twanging a kind of guitar, the
musician chanting the while to an exceedingly
simple air, words which, in deference to the
possible prejudices of those readers who may
be on terms of familarity with the Japanese
language, I have deemed it proper to omit —
with an apology to the Prudes for the absence
of an appendix in which they might be given
without offense. (I had it in mind to insert
the music here, but am told by credible
authority that in Japan music is moral or
immoral without reference to the words
that may be sung with it. So I omit —
with reluctance — the score, as well as the
words.)

The chanting having proceeded for a few
minutes, the girls take up the song and enter
spiritedly into the dance. One challenges an-
other, and at a certain stage of the lively song
with the sharp cry ''Hoir makes a motion

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 303

with her hand. Failure on the part of the
other instantaneously and exactly to copy this
gesture entails the forfeiture of a garment,
which is at once frankly removed. Cold and
mechanical at the outset, the music grows
spirited as the girls grow nude, and the
dancers themselves become strangely excited
as they warm to the work, taking, the while,
generous potations of saki to assist their en-
thusiasm.

Let it not be supposed that in all this there
is anything of passion; it is with these women
nothing more that the mere mental exaltation
produced by music, exercise and drink. With
the spectators (I have heard) it fares some-
what otherwise.

When modesty's last rag has been dis-
carded, the girls as if suddenly abashed at
their own audacity, fly like startled fawns
from the room, leaving their patrons to make
a settlement with conscience and arrange the
terms upon which that monitor will consent
to the performance of the rest of the dance.
For the dance proper — or improper — is now
about to begin. If the first part seemed some-
what tropical, comparison with what follows
will acquit it of that demerit. The combina-
tions of the dance are infinitely varied, and sq

304 THE COLLECTED WORKS

long as willing witnesses remain — which, in
simple justice to manly fortitude it should be
added, is a good while — so long will the
"Chon Nookee" present a new and unexpected
phase; but it is thought expedient that no
more of them be presented here, and if the
reader has done me the honor to have enough
of it, we will pass to the consideration of an-
other class of dances.

Of this class those most in favor are the Fan
and Umbrella dances, performed, usually, by
young girls trained almost from infancy. The
Japanese are passionately fond of these beauti-
ful exhibitions of grace, and no manner of
festivity is satisfactorily celebrated without
them. The musicians, all girls, commonly six
or eight in number, play on the guitar, a small
ivory wand being used, instead of the fingers,
to strike the strings. The dancer, a girl of
some thirteen years, is elaborately habited as
a page. Confined by the closely folded robe
as by fetters, the feet and legs are not much
used, the feet, indeed, never leaving the floor.
Time is marked by undulations of the body,
waving the arms, and deft manipulation of
the fan. The supple figure bends and sways
like a reed in the wind, advances and recedes,
one movement sygceeding another by transi-

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 305

tions singularly graceful, the arms describ-
ing innumerable curves, and the fan so skil-
fully handled as to seem instinct with a life
and liberty of its own. Nothing more pure,
more devoid of evil suggestion, can be
imagined. It is a sad fact that the poor
children trained to the execution of this harm-
less and pleasing dance are destined, in their
riper years, to give their charms and graces
to the service of the devil in the "Chon
Nookee." The umbrella dance is similar to
the one just described, the main difference
being the use of a small, gaily-colored um-
brella in place of the fan.

Crossing from Japan to China, the Prude
will find a condition of things which, for iron
severity of morals, is perhaps unparallelel —
no dancing whatever, by either profligate or
virtuous women. To whatever original cause
we may attribute this peculiarity, it seems
eternal; for the women of the upper classes
have an ineradicable habit of so mutilating
their feet that even the polite and comparat-
ively harmless accomplishment of walking
is beyond their power; those of the lower
orders have not sense enough to dance; and
that men should dance alone is a proposition
of such free and forthright idiocy as to be but

306 THE COLLECTED WORKS

obscurely conceivable to any understanding
not having the gift of maniacal inspiration,
or the normal advantage of original incapac-
ity. Altogether, we may rightly consider
China the heaven-appointed habitat of people
who dislike the dance.

In Siam, what little is known of dancing is
confined to the people of Laos. The women
are meek-eyed, spiritless creatures, crushed
under the heavy domination of the stronger
sex. Naturally, their music and dancing are
of a plaintive, almost doleful character, not
without a certain cloying sweetness, however.
The dancing is as graceful as the pudgy little
bodies of the women are capable of achieving
— a little more pleasing than the capering of a
butcher's block, but not quite so much so as
that of a wash-tub. Its greatest merit is the
steely rigor of its decorum. The dancers, how-
ever, like ourselves, are a shade less appall-
ingly proper off the floor than on it.

In no part of the world, probably, is the
condition of women more consummately de-
plorable than in India; and, in consequence,
nowhere than in the dances of that country is
manifested a more simple unconsciousness or
frank disregard of decency. As by nature,
and according to the light that is in him, the

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 807

Hindu IS indolent and licentious, so, in
accurately matching degree, are the dancing
girls innocent of morality, and uninfected
with shame. It would be difficult more
keenly to insult a respectable Hindu woman
than to accuse her of having danced, while
the man who should affect the society of the
females justly so charged would incur the last-
ing detestation of his race. The dancing girls
are of two orders of infamy — those who serve
in the temples, and are hence called Devo-
Dasi, slaves of the gods, and the Nautch girls,
who dance in a secular sort for hire. Fre-
quently a mother will make a vow to dedicate
her unborn babe, if it have the obedience to
be a girl, to the service of some particular
god; in this way, and by the daughters born to
themselves, are the ranks of the Devo-Dasi
recruited. The sons of these miserable creat-
ures are taught to play upon musical instru-
ments for their mothers and sisters to dance
by. As the ordinary Hindu woman is care-
less about the exposure of her charms, so these
dancers take intelligent and mischievous ad-
vantage of the social situation by immodestly
concealing their own. The Devo-Dasi actually
go to the length of wearing clothes! Each
temple has a band of eight or ten of these girls,

308 THE COLLECTED WORKS

who celebrate their saltatory rites morning
and evening. Advancing at the head of the
religious procession, they move themselves in
an easy and graceful manner, with gradual
transition to a more sensuous and voluptuous
motion, suiting their action to the religious
frame of mind of the devout, until their well-
rounded limbs and lithe figures express a de-
gree of piety consonant with the purpose of
the particular occasion. They attend all pub-
lic ceremonies and festivals, executing their
audacious dances impartially for gods and
men.

The Nautch girls are purchased in infancy,
and as carefully trained in their wordly way
as the Devo-Dasi for the diviner function, be-
ing about equally depraved. All the large
cities contain full sets of these girls, with
attendant musicians, ready for hire at festiv-
als of any kind, and by leaving orders parties
are served at their residences with fidelity and
dispatch. Commonly they dance two at a
time, but frequently some wealthy gentleman
will secure the services of a hundred or more
to assist him through the day without resort-
ing to questionable expedients of time-killing.
Their dances require strict attention, from the
circumstance that their feet — like those of the

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 309

immortal equestrienne of Banbury Cross — are
hung with small bells, which must be made to
sound in concert with the notes of the music-
ians. In attitude and gesture they are almost
as bad as their pious sisters of the temples. The
endeavor is to express the passions of love,
hope, jealousy, despair, etc., and they eke out
this mimicry with chanted songs in every way
worthy of the movements of which they are
the explanatory notes. These are the only
women in Hindustan whom it is thought
worth while to teach to read and write. If
they would but make as noble use of their
intellectual as they do of their physical educ-
ation, they might perhaps produce books as
moral as The Dance of Death.

In Persia and Asia Minor, the dances and
dancers are nearly alike. In both countries
the Georgian and Circassian slaves who have
been taught the art of pleasing, are bought by
the wealthy for their amusement and that of
their wives and concubines. Some of the per-
formances are pure in motive and modest in
execution, but most of them are interesting
otherwise. The beautiful young Circassian
slave, clad in loose robes of diaphanous text-
ure, takes position, castanets in hand, on a
square rug, and to the music of a kind of violin

310 THE COLLECTED WORKS

goes through the figures of her dance, her
whiteness giving her an added indelicacy
which the European spectator misses in the
capering of her berry-brown sisters-in-sin of
other climes.

The dance of the Georgian is more spirited.
Her dress is a brief skirt, reaching barely to
the knees, and a low-cut chemise. In her
night-black hair is wreathed a bright-red
scarf or string of pearls. The music, at first
low and slow, increases by degrees in rapidity
and volume, then falls away almost to silence,
again swells and quickens, and so alternates,
the motions of the dancer's willowy and obedi-
ent figure accurately according, now seeming
to swim languidly, and anon her little feet
having their will of her, and fluttering in mid-
air like a couple of birds. She is an engaging
creature; her ways are ways of pleasantness,
but whether all her paths are peace depends
somewhat, it is reasonable to conjecture, upon
the circumspection of her daily walk and con-
versation when relegated to the custody of her
master's wives.

In some parts of Persia the dancing of boys
appareled as women is held in high favor, but
exactly what wholesome human sentiment it
addresses I am not prepared to say.

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 311
VIII

IN THE BOTTOM OF THE CRUCIBLE

From the rapid and imperfect review of cert-
ain characteristic oriental dances in the chap-
ters immediately preceding — or rather from
the studies some of whose minor results those
chapters embody — I make deduction of a few
significant facts, to which facts of contrary
significance seem exceptional. In the first
place, it is to be noted that in countries where
woman is conspicuously degraded the dance
is correspondingly depraved. By "the dance,"
I mean, of course, those characteristic and
typical performances which have permanent
place in the social life of the people. Amongst
all nations the dance exists in certain loose
and unrecognized forms, which are the out-
growth of the moment — creatures of caprice,
posing and pranking their brief and inglorious
season, to be superseded by some newer favor-
ite, born of some newer accident or fancy. A
fair type of these ephemeral dances — the
comets of the saltatory system — in so far as
they can have a type, is the now familiar Can-
Can of the Jardin Mabille — a dance the capt-

312 THE COLLECTED WORKS

ivating naughtiness of which has given it
wide currency in our generation, the succes-
sors to whose aged rakes and broken bawds it
will fail to please and would probably make
unhappy. Dances of this character, neither
national, universal, nor enduring, have little
value to the student of anything but anatomy
and lingerie. By study of a thousand, the
product of as many years, it might be possible
to trace the thread upon which such beads are
strung — indeed, it is pretty obvious without
research; but considered singly they have
nothing of profit to the investigator, who will
do well to contemplate without reflection or
perform without question, as the bent of his
mind may be observant or experimental.

Dancing, then, is indelicate where the women
are depraved; and to this it must be added
that the women are depraved where the men
are indolent. We need not trouble ourselves
to consider too curiously as to cause and effect.
Whether in countries where man is too
lazy to be manly, woman practices deferential
adjustment of her virtues to the loose exac-
tions of his tolerance, or whether for ladies of
indifferent modesty their lords will not make
exertion — these are questions for the eth-
nologer. It concerns our purpose only to

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 818

note that the male who sits cross-legged on a
rug and permits his female to do the dancing
for both gets a quality distinctly inferior to
that enjoyed by his more energetic brother,
willing himself to take a leg at the game.
Doubtless the lazy fellow prefers the loose
gamboling of nude girls to the decent grace
and moderation of a better art; but this, I sub-
mit, is an error of taste resulting from imper-
fect instruction.

And here we are confronted with the ever-
recurrent question: Is dancing immoral? The
reader who has done me the honor attentively
to consider the brief descriptions of certain
dances hereinbefore presented will, it is
believed, be now prepared to answer that some
sorts of dancing indubitably are — a bright and
shining example of the type being the exploit
wherein women alone perform and men alone
admire. But one of the arguments by which
it is sought to prove dancing immoral in itself
— namely, that it provokes evil passions — ^we
are now able to analyze with the necessary
discrimination, assigning to it its just weight,
and tracing its real bearing on the question.
Dances like those described (with, I hope a
certain delicacy and reticence) are undoubt-
edly disturbing to the spectator. They have

314 THE COLLECTED WORKS

in that circumstance their raison d'etre. As
to that, then, there can be no two opinions.
But observe: the male oriental voluptuary
does not himself dance. Why? Partly, no
doubt, because of his immortal indolence, but
mainly, I venture to think, because he wishes
to enjoy his reprehensible emotion, and this
can not coexist with muscular activity. If the
reader — through either immunity from im-
proper emotion or unfamiliarity with muscul-
ar activity — entertains a doubt of this, his
family physician will be happy to remove it.
Nothing is more certain than that the danc-
ing girls of oriental countries themselves feel
nothing of what they have the skill to simul-
ate ; and the ballet-dancer of our own stage is
icily unconcerned while kicking together the
smouldering embers in the heart of the wigged
and corseted old beau below her, and play-
ing the duse's delight with the disobedient
imagination of the he Prude posted in the
nooks and shadows thoughtfully provided for
him. Stendahl frankly informs us: "I have
had much experience with the danseuses of

the Theatre at Valence. I am convinced

that they are, for the most part, very chaste.
It is because their occupation is too fatigu-
ing."

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 315

The same author, by the way, says else-
where:

I would wish, if I were legislator, that they should
adopt in France, as in Germany, the custom of soirees
dansantes. Four times a month the young girls go with
their mothers to a ball, beginning at seven o'clock, end-
ing at midnight, and requiring, for all expense, a violin
and some glasses of water. In an adjacent room, the
mothers, perhaps a little jealous of the happy education
of their daughters, play at cards; in a third, the fathers
find the newspapers and talk politics. Between mid-
night and one o'clock all the family are reunited and
have regained the paternal roof. The young girls learn
to know the young men; the fatuity, and the indiscre-
tion that follows it, become quickly odious; in a word,
they learn how to choose a husband. Some young girls
have unfortunate love aifairs, but the number of deceived
husbands and unhappy households (mauvaises menages)
diminishes in immense proportion.

For an iron education in cold virtue there
is no school like the position of sitting-master
to the wall-flowers at a church-sociable; but
it is humbly conjectured that even the austere
morality of a bald-headed Prude might re-
ceive an added iciness if he would but attend
one of these simple dancing-bouts disguised
^s a sweet young girl,

316 THE COLLECTED WORKS

IX

COUNSEL FOR THE DEFENSE

Nearly all the great writers of antiquity
and of the medieval period who have men-
tioned dancing at all have done so in terms of
unmistakable favor; of modern famous auth-
ors, they only have condemned it from whose
work, or from what is known of their personal
character, we may justly infer an equal avers-
ion to pretty much everything in the way of
pleasure that a Christian needs not die in order
to enjoy. English literature — I use the word
in its noble sense, to exclude all manner of
preaching, whether clerical or lay — is full of
the dance; the sound'of merry-makers footing
it featly to the music runs like an undertone
through all the variations of its theme and fills
all its pauses.

In the "Miller's Tale," Chaucer mentions
dancing among the accomplishments of the
parish clerk, along with blood-letting and the
drawing of legal documents :

A merry child he was, so God me save ;

Wei coud he leten blood and clippe and shave,

And make a chartre of land, and a quitance;

^ OF AMBROSE BIERCE 317

In twenty maners could he trip and dance,
After the scole of Oxenforde tho,
And with his legges casten to and fro.*

*On this passage Tyrwhit makes the following ju-
dicious comment: "The school of Oxford seems to have
been in much the same estimation for its dancing as that
of Stratford for its French" — alluding, of course, to
what is said in the Prologue, of the French spoken by the
Prioress :

And French she spoke, full fayre and fetisly,
After the scole of Stratford-atte-bowe,
For French of Paris was to hire unknowe.

Milton, the greatest of the Puritans — intel-
lectual ancestry of the modern degenerate
Prudes — had a wholesome love of the dance,
and nowhere is his pen so joyous as in its de-
scription in the well-known passage from
"Comus" which, should it occur to my
memory while delivering a funeral oration,
I am sure I could not forbear to quote, albeit
this, our present argument, is but little
furthered by its context:

Meanwhile welcome joy and feast,
Midnight shout and revelry,
Tipsy dance and jollity.
Praid your locks with rosy twine,

318 THE COLLECTED WORKS

Dropping odors, dropping wine,

Rigor now is gone to bed,

And advice, with scrupulous head,

Strict age and sour severity.

With their grave saws in slumber lie.

We, that are of purer fire,

Imitate the starry quire,

Who, in their nightly watching spheres,

Lead in swift round the months and years.

The sounds and seas with all their finny drove,

Now to the moon in wavering morrice move;

And on the tawny sands and shelves.

Trip the pert fairies and the dapper elves.

If Milton was not himself a good dancer —
and as to that point my memory is unstored
with instance or authority — it will at least be
conceded that he was an admirable reporter,
with his heart in the business. Somewhat to
lessen the force of the objection that he puts
the foregoing lines into a not very respectable
mouth, on a not altogether reputable occasion,
I append the following passage from the same
poem, supposed to be spoken by the good
spirit who had brought a lady and her two
brothers through many perils, restoring them
to their parents:

Noble lord and lady bright,
I have brought ye new delight:

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 819

Here behold, so goodly grown,
Three fair branches of your own.
Heaven hath timely tried their youth.
Their faith, their patience, and their truth,
And sent them here through hard assays
With a crown of deathless praise,
To triumph in victorious dance.
O'er sensual folly and intemperance.

The lines on dancing — lines which them-
selves dance — in "L'Allegro," are too famil-
iar; I dare not permit myself the enjoyment
of quotation.

Lord Herbert of Cherbury, one of the most
finished gentlemen of his time otherwise, la-
ments in his autobiography that he had never
learned to dance, because that accomplish-
ment "doth fashion the body, and gives one a
good presence and address in all companies,
since it disposeth the limbs to a kind of
souplesse (as the French call it) and agility,
insomuch as they seem to have the use of their
legs, arms, and bodies more than many others
who, standing stiff and stark in their postures,
seem as if they were taken in their joints, or
had not the perfect use of their members.''
Altogether, a very grave objection to danc-
ing, in the opinion of those who discounten-

320 THE COLLECTED WORKS

ance it, and I take great credit for candor in
presenting his lordship's indictment.

In the following pertinent passage from
Lemontey I do not remember the opinion he
quotes from Locke, but his own is sufficiently
to the point :

The dance is for young women what the chase is
for young men; a protecting school of wisdom — a pre-
servative of the growing passions. The celebrated Locke,
who made virtue the sole end of education, expressly
recommends teaching children to dance as early as they
are able to learn. Dancing carries within itself an emin-
ently cooling quality, and all over the world the tempests
of the heart await, to break forth, the repose of the
limbs."

In "The Traveller," Goldsmith says:

Alike all ages; dames of ancient days

Have led their children through the mirthful maze,

And the gay grandsire, skilled in gestic lore,

Has frisked beneath the burden of three score.

To the Prudes, in all soberness — Is it likely,
considering the stubborn conservatism of age,
that these dames, well-seasoned in the habit,
will leave it off directly, or the impenitent old
grandsire abate one jot or tittle of his friski-
ness in the near future? Is it a reasonable

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 321

hope? Is the outlook from the watch-towers
of Philistia an encouraging one?

X

THEY ALL DANCE

Fountains dance down to the river

Rivers to the ocean,
Summer leaflets dance and quiver

To the breeze's motion.
Nothing in the world is single —

All things, by a simple rule,
Nods and steps and graces mingle

As at dancing-schooL

See, the shadows on the mountain

Pirouette with one another ;
See, the leaf upon the fountain

Dances with its leaflet brother.
See, the moonlight on the earth,

Flecking forest, gleam and glance!
What are all these dancings worth

If I may not dance?

—After Shelley.

Dance? Why not? The dance is natural,
it is innocent, wholesome, enjoyable. It has
the sanction of religion, philosophy, science.
It is approved by the sacred writings of all

322 THE COLLECTED WORKS

ages and nations — of Judaism, Buddhism,
Christianity, Islam; of Zoroaster and Confu-
cius. Not an altar, from Jupiter to Jesus,
around which the votaries have not danced
with religious zeal and indubitable profit to
mind and body. Fire-worshipers of Persia
and Peru danced about the visible sign and
manifestation to their deity. Dervishes dance
in frenzy, and the Shakers jump up and come
down hard through excess of the Spirit. All
the gods have danced with all the goddesses —
round dances, too. The lively divinities
created by the Greeks in their own image
danced divinely, as became them. Old Thor
stormed and thundered down the icy halls of
the Scandinavian mythology to the music of
runic rhymes, and the souls of slain heroes in
Valhalla take to their toes in celebration of
their valorous deeds done in the body upon
the bodies of their enemies. Angels dance be-
fore the Great White Throne to harps attuned
by angel hands, and the Master of the Revels
— who arranges the music of the spheres —
looks approvingly on. Dancing is of divine
institution.

The elves and fairies "dance delicate meas-
ures" in the light of the moon and stars. The
troll dances his gruesome jig on lonely hills:

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 323

the gnome executes his little pigeon-wing in
the obscure subterrene by the glimmer of a
diamond. Nature's untaught children dance
in wood and glade, stimulated of leg by the
sunshine with which they are soaken top-full
— the same quickening emanation that inspires
the growing tree and upheaves the hill. And,
if I err not, there is sound Scripture for the
belief that these self-same eminences have
capacity to skip for joy. The peasant dances
— a trifle clumsily — at harvest feast when the
grain is garnered. The stars in heaven dance
visibly; the firefly dances in emulation of the
stars. The sunshine dances on the waters.
The humming-bird and the bee dance about
the flowers, which dance to the breeze. The
innocent lamb, type of the White Christ,
dances on the green; and the matronly cow
perpetrates an occasional stiff enormity when
she fancies herself unobserved. All the sport-
ive rollickings of all the animals, from the
agile fawn to the unwieldly behemoth, are
dances taught them by nature.

I am not here making an argument for danc-
ing; I only assert its goodness, confessing its
abuse. We do not argue the wholesomeness of
sunshine and cold water; we assert it, admitt-
ing that sunstroke is mischievous and that

324 THE COLLECTED WORKS

copious potations of freezing water will
founder a superheated horse, and urge the hot
blood to the head of an imprudent man
similarly prepared, killing him, as is right.
We do not build syllogisms to prove that
grains and fruits of the earth are of God's
best bounty to man ; we allow that bad whisky
may — with difficulty — be distilled from rye
to spoil the toper's nose, and that hydrocyanic
acid can be got out of the bloomy peach. It
were folly to prove that Science and Invention
are our very good friends, yet the sapper who
has had the misfortune to be blown to rags by
the mine he was preparing for his enemy will
not deny that gunpowder has aptitudes of
mischief; and from the point of view of a nig-
ger ordered upon the safety-valve of a racing
steamboat, the vapor of water is a thing
accurst. Shall we condemn music because the
lute makes "lascivious pleasing?" Or poetry
because some amorous bard tells in warm
rhyme the story of the passions, and Swin-
burne has had the goodness to make vice
offensive with his hymns in its praise? Or
sculpture because from the guiltless marble
may be wrought a drunken Silenus or a
lechering satyr? — painting because the un-
tamed fancies of a painter sometimes break

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 325

tether and run riot on his canvas? Because
the orator may provoke the wild passions of
the mob, shall there be no more public speak-
ing?— no further acting because the actor may
be pleased to saw the air, or the actress display
her ultimate inch of leg? Shall we upset the
pulpit because poor dear Mr. Tilton had a
prettier wife than poor, dear Mr. Beecher?
The bench had its Jeffrey, yet it is necessary
that we have the deliveries of judgment be-
tween ourselves and the litigious. The medic-
al profession has nursed poisoners enough to
have baned all the rats of Christendom; but
the resolute patient must still have his pre-
scription— if he die for it. Shall we disband
our armies because in the hand of an ambitious
madman a field-marshars baton may brain a
helpless State? — our navies because in ships
pirates have "sailed the seas over?" Let us
not commit the vulgarity of condemning the
dance because of its possibilities of pervers-
ion by the vicious and the profligate. Let us
not utter us in hot bosh and baking nonsense,
but cleave to reason and the sweet sense of
things.

Dancing never made a good girl bad, nor
turned a wholesome young man to evil ways.
"Opportunity!" simpers the tedious virgin

326 THE COLLECTED WORKS

past the wall-flower of her youth. "Oppor-
tunity!" cackles the blase beau who has out-
lasted his legs and gone deaconing in a church.
Opportunity, indeed! There is oppor-
tunity in church and school-room, in social
intercourse. There is opportunity in libraries,
art-galleries, picnics, street-cars, Bible-classes
and at fairs and matinees. Opportunity —
rare, delicious opportunity, not innocently to
be ignored — in moonlight rambles by still
streams. Opportunity, such as it is, behind
the old gentleman's turned back, and beneath
the good mother's spectacled nose. You shall
sooner draw out leviathan with a hook, or bind
Arcturus and his sons, than baffle the upthrust
of Opportunity's many heads. Opportunity is
a veritable Hydra, Argus and Briareus rolled
into one. He has a hundred heads to plan his
poachings, a hundred eyes to spy the land, a
hundred hands to set his snares and springes.
In the country where young girls are habit-
ually unattended in the street; where the
function of chaperon is commonly, and, it
should be added, intelligently performed by
some capable young male; where the young
women receive evening calls from young men
concerning whose presence in the parlor
mamma in the nursery and papa at the "office"

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 327

— poor, overworked papa! — give themselves
precious little trouble, — this prate of ball-
room opportunity is singularly and engag-
ingly idiotic. The worthy people who hold
such language may justly boast themselves
superior to reason and impregnable to light.
The only effective reply to these creatures
would be a cuffing; the well-meant objections
of another class merit the refutation of distinct
characterization. It is the old talk of devotees
about sin, of topers concerning water, tem-
perance men of gin; and, albeit it is neither
wise nor witty, it is becoming in us at whom
they rail to deal mercifully with them. In
some otherwise estimable souls one of these
harmless brain-cracks may be a right lovable
trait of character.

Issues of a social import as great as a raid
against dancing have been raised ere now.
Will the coming man smoke? Will the com-
ing man drink wine? These tremendous and
imperative problems only recently agitated
some of the "thoughtful minds" in our midst.
By degrees they lost their preeminence; they
were seen to be in process of solution without
social cataclysm; they have, in a manner, been
referred for disposal to the coming man him-
self: that is to say, they have been dropped,

328 THE COLLECTED WORKS

and are to-day as dead as Julius Caesar. The
present hour has, in its turn, produced its own
awful problem: Will the coming woman
waltz?

As a question of mere fact the answer is pat-
ent: She will. Dancing will be good for her;
she will like it; so she is going to waltz. But
the question may rather be put — to borrow
phraseology current among her critics: Had
she oughter? — from a moral point of view,
now. From a moral point, then, let us seek
from analogy some light on the question of
what, from its actual, practical bearings, may
be dignified by the name Conundrum.

Ought a man not to smoke? — from a moral
point of view. The economical view-point,
the view-point of convenience, and all the rest
of them, are not now in question; the simple
question is: Is it immoral to smoke? And
again — still from the moral point of view: Is
it immoral to drink wine? Is it immoral to
play at cards? — to visit theaters? (In Boston
you go to some

harmless "Museum,"
Where folks who like plays may religiously see 'em.)

Finally, then — and always from the same

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 329

elevated view-point: Is it immoral to waltz?

The suggestions here started will not be
further pursued in this place. It is quite
pertinent now to note that we do smoke be-
cause we like it; and do drink wine because
we like it; and do waltz because we like it,
and have the added consciousness that it is a
duty. I am sorry for a fellow-creature — male
— who knows not the comfort of a cigar; sorry
and concerned for him who is innocent of the
knowledge of good and evil that lurk respect-
ively in Chambertin and cheap "claret."
Nor is my compassion altogether free from
a sense of superiority to the object of it —
superiority untainted, howbeit, by truculence.
I perceive that life has been bestowed upon
him for purposes inscrutable to me, though
dimly hinting its own justification as a warn-
ing or awful example. So, too, of the men
and women — "beings erect, and walking upon
two [uneducated] legs" — whose unsophistic-
ated toes have never, inspired by the rosy,
threaded the labyrinth of the mazy ere court-
ing the kindly offices of the balmy. It is only
human to grieve for them, poor things!

But if their throbbing bunions, encased in
clumsy high-lows, be obtruded to trip us in
our dance, shall we not stamp on them? Yea,

330 THE COLLECTED WORKS

verily, while we have a heel to crunch with
and a leg to grind it home.

XI

LUST, QUOTH 'a!

You have danced? Ah, good. You have
waltzed? Better. You have felt the hot blood
hound through your veins, as your beautiful
partner, compliant to the lightest pressure of
your finger-tips, her breath responsive,
matched her every motion with yours? Best
of all — for you have served in the temple —
you are of the priesthood of manhood. You
cannot misunderstand, you will not deliver
false oracle.

Do you remember your first waltz with the
lovely woman whom you had longed like a
man but feared like a boy to touch — even so
much as the hem of her garment? Can you
recall the time, place and circumstance? Has
not the very first bar of the music that whirled
you away been singing itself in your memory
ever since? Do you recall the face you then
looked into, the eyes that seemed deeper than
a mountain tarn, the figure that you clasped,

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 331

the beating of the heart, the warm breath that
mingled with your own? Can you faintly,
as in a dream — blase old dancer that you are
— invoke a reminiscence of the delirium that
stormed your soul, expelling the dull demon
in possession? Was it lust, as the Prudes aver
— the poor dear Prudes, with the feel of the
cold wall familiar to the leathery backs of
them?

It was the gratification — the decent, honora-
ble, legal gratification — of the passion for
rhythm; the unconditional surrender to the
supreme law of periodicity, under conditions
of exact observance by all external things. The
notes of the music repeat and supplement each
other; the lights burn with answering flame
at sequent distances; the walls, the windows,
doors, mouldings, frescoes, iterate their lines,
their levels, and panels, interminable of com-
bination and similarity; the inlaid floor
matches its angles, multiplies its figures, does
over again at this point what it did at that;
the groups of dancers deploy in couples,
aggregate in groups, and again deploy, evok-
ing endless resemblances. And all this
rhythm and recurrence, borne in upon the
brain — itself rhythmic — through intermittent
senses, is converted into motion, and the mind,

332 THE COLLECTED WORKS

yielding utterly to its environment, knows the
happiness of faith, the ecstasy of compliance,
the rapture of congruity. And this the dull
dunces — the eyeless, earless, brainless and
bloodless callosites of cavil — are pleased to
call lust!

0 ye, who teach the ingenuous youth of nations
The Boston Dip, the German and the Glide,

1 pray you guard them upon all occasions
From contact of the palpitating side;

Requiring that their virtuous gyrations

Shall interpose a space a furlong wide
Between the partners, lest their thoughts grow lewd —
So shall we satisfy the exacting Prude.

— Israfel Brown.

XII

OUR GRANDMOTHERS' LEGS

It is depressing to realize how little most of
us know of the dancing of our ancestors. I
would give value to behold the execution of a
coranto and inspect the steps of a cinque-pace,
having assurance that the performances
assuming these names were veritably identical
with their memorable originals. We possess

^ OF AMBROSE BIERCE 333

the means of verifying somewhat as to the
nature of the minuet; but after what fashion
did our revered grandfather do his rigadoon
and his gavot? What manner of thing was
that pirouet in the deft execution of which he
felt an honest exultation? And what were the
steps of his contra (or country) and Cossack
dances? What tune was that — "The Devil
amongst the Fiddlers" — for which he
clamored, to inspire his feats of leg?

In our fathers' time we read:

I wore my blue coat and brass buttons, very high in
the neck, short in the waist and sleeves, nankeen trousers
and white silk stockings, and a white waistcoat. I per-
formed all the steps accurately and with great agility.

Which, it appears, gained the attention of
the company. And it well might, for the year
was 1830, and the mode of performing the
cotillion of the period was undergoing the
metamorphosis of which the perfect develop-
ment has been familiar to ourselves. In its
next stage the male celebrant is represented to
us as "hopping about with a face expressive of
intense solemnity, dancing as if a quadrille"
— mark the newer word — "were not a thing
to be laughed at, but a severe trial to the feel-
ings." There is a smack of ancient history

334 THE COLLECTED WORKS

about this, too; it lurks in the word "hopp-
ing." In the perfected development of this
dance as known to ourselves, no stress of caric-
ature would describe the movement as a hopp-
ing. But our grandfather not only hopped,
he did more. He sprang from the floor and
quivered. In midair he crossed his feet
twice and even three times, before alighting.
And our budding grandmother beheld, and
experienced flutterings of the bosom at his
manly achievements. Some memory of these
feats survived in the performances of the male
ballet-dancers — a breed now happily extinct.
A fine old lady — she lives, aged eighty-two —
showed me once the exercise of "setting to
your partner," performed in her youth; and
truly it was right marvelous. She literally
bounced hither and thither, effecting a twist-
ing in and out of the feet, a patting and a
flickering of the toes incredibly intricate. For
the celebration of these rites her partner
would array himself in morocco pumps with
cunningly contrived buckles of silver, silk
stockings, salmon-colored silk breeches tied
with abundance of riband, exuberant frills, or
"chitterlings," which puffed out at the neck
and bosom not unlike the wattles of a he-
turkey; and under his arms — as the fowl

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 335

roasted might have carried its gizzard — our
grandfather pressed the flattened simulacrum
of a cocked hat. At this interval of time
charity requires us to drop over the lady's own
costume a veil that, tried by our canons of
propriety, it sadly needed. She was young
and thoughtless, the good grandmother; she
was conscious of the posession of charms and
concealed them not.

To the setting of these costumes, manners
and practices, there was imported from Ger-
many a dance called Waltz, which as I con-
ceive, was the first of our "round" dances. It
was welcomed by most persons who could
dance, and by some superior souls who could
not. Among the latter, the late Lord Byron —
whose participation in the dance was barred
by an unhappy physical disability — addressed
the new-comer in characteristic verse. Some
of the lines in this ingenious nobleman's
apostrophe are not altogether intelligible,
when applied to any dance that we know by
the name of waltz. For example:

Pleased round the chalky floor, how well they trip,
One hand* reposing on the royal hip,
The other to the shoulder no less royal
Ascending with affection truly loyal.
*Le, one of the lady's hands.

336 THE COLLECTED WORKS

These lines imply an attitude unknown to
contemporary waltzers, but the description in-
volves no poetic license. Our dear grand-
mothers (giddy, giddy girls!) did their waltz
that way. Let me quote :

The lady takes the gentleman round the neck with
one arm, resting against his shoulder. During the mo-
tion, the dancers are continually changing their relative
situations: now the gentleman brings his arm about the
lady's neck, and the lady takes him round the waist

At another point, the lady may "lean gently
on his shoulder," their arms (as it appears)
"entwining." This description is by an eye-
witness, whose observation is taken, not at the
rather debauched court of the Prince Regent,
but at the simple republican assemblies of
New York. The observer is the gentle Irv-
ing, writing in 1807. Occasional noteworthy
experiences they must have had — those mod-
est, blooming grandmothers — for, it is to be
borne in mind, tipsiness was rather usual
with dancing gentlemen in the fine old days
of Port and Madeira; and the blithe, white-
armed grandmothers themselves did sip their
punch, to a man. However, we may forbear
criticism. We, at least, owe nothing but
reverent gratitude to a generation from which

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 337

we derive life, waltzing and the memory of
Madeira. Even when read, as it needs should
be read, in the light of that prose descrip-
tion of the dance to which it was addressed,
Lord Byron's welcome to the waltz will be
recognized as one more illustration of a set of
hoary and moss-grown truths.

As parlor-soldiers, graced with fancy-scars,

Rehearse their bravery in imagined wars;

As paupers, gathered in congenial flocks,

Babble of banks, insurances, and stocks;

As each if oft'nest eloquent of what

He hates or covets, but possesses not ;

As cowards talk of pluck; misers of waste;

Scoundrels of honor; country clowns of taste;

Ladies of logic; devotees of sin;

Topers of water; temperance men of gin —

my lord Byron sang of waltzing. Let us
forgive and — remembering his poor foot —
pity him. Yet the opinions of famous persons
possess an interest that is akin, in the minds of
many plain folk, to weight. Let us, then, in-
cline an ear to another: "Laura was fond of
waltzing, as every brisk and innocent young
girl should be," wrote he than who none has
written more nobly in our time — he who
"could appreciate good women and describe
them; and draw them more truly than any

338 THE COLLECTED WORKS

novelist in the language, except Miss Austen."
The same sentiment with reference to dancing
appears in many places in his immortal pages.
In his younger days as attache of legation in
Germany, Mr. Thackeray became a practiced
waltzer. As a censor he thus possesses over
Lord Byron whatever advantage may accrue
from knowledge of the subject whereof he
wrote.

We are happily not called upon to institute
a comparison of character between the two
distinguished moralists, though the same,
drawn masterly, might not be devoid of enter-
tainment and instruction. But two or three
other points of distinction should be kept in
mind as having sensible relation to the ques-
tion of competency to bear witness. Byron
wrote of the women of a corrupted court;
Thackeray of the women of that society indic-
ated by the phrase "Persons whom one meets"
— and meets now. Byron wrote of an obsolete
dance, described by Irving in terms of decided
strength ; Thackeray wrote of our own waltz.
In turning off his brilliant and witty verses
it is unlikely that any care as to their truth-
fulness disturbed the glassy copiousness of the
Byronic utterance; this child of nature did
never consider too curiously of justice,

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 339

moderation and such inventions of the
schools. The key-note of all the other wrote
is given by his faithful pen when it avers that
it never "signed the page that registered a
lie." Byron was a "gentleman of wit and
pleasure about town"; Thackeray the father
of daughters. However, all this is perhaps
little to the purpose. We owe no trifling debt
to Lord Byron for his sparkling and spirited
lines, and by no good dancer would they be
"willingly let die." Poetry, music, dancing
— they are one art. The muses are sisters, yet
they do not quarrel. Of a truth, even as was
Laura, so every brisk and innocent young girl
should be. And it is safe to predict that she
will be. If she would enjoy the advantage of
belonging to Our Set she must be.

As a rule, the ideas of the folk who cherish
a prejudice against dancing are crude rather
than unclean — the outcome much more of
ignorance than salacity. Of course there are
exceptions. In my great work on The Prude
all will be attended to with due discrimina-
tion in apportionment of censure. At present
the spirit of the dance makes merry with my
pen, for from yonder "stately pleasure-dome"
(decreed by one Kubla Khan, formerly of
The Big Bonanza Mining Company) the

840 BIERCE'S COLLECTED WORKS

strains of the Blue Danube float out upon the
night. Avaunt, miscreants! lest we chase ye
with flying feet and do our little dance upon
your unwholesome carcasses. Already the
toes of our partners begin to twiddle beneath
their petticoats. Come, then, Stoopid — can't
you move? No! — they change it to a galop
— and eke the good old Sturm. Firm and
steady, now, fair partner mine, whiles we run
that gobemouche down and trample him
miserably. There: light and softly again —
the servants will remove the remains.
And hark! that witching strain once more:

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EPIGRAMS

EPIGRAMS

If every hypocrite in the United States
were to break his leg to-day the country could
be successfully invaded to-morrow by the
warlike hypocrites of Canada.

To Dogmatism the Spirit of Inquiry is the
same as the Spirit of Evil, and to pictures of
the latter it appends a tail to represent the
note of interrogation.

" Immoral " is the judgment of the stalled
ox on the gamboling lamb.

In forgiving an injury be somewhat cere-
monious, lest your magnanimity be construed
as indifference.

True, man does not know woman. But
neither does woman.

Age is provident because the less future we
have the more we fear it.

Reason is fallible and virtue vincible; the
winds vary and the needle forsakes the pole,
but stupidity never errs and never intermits.
Since it has been found that the axis of the

343

344 THE COLLECTED WORKS

earth wabbles, stupidity is indispensable as a
standard of constancy.

In order that the list of able women may
be memorized for use at meetings of the op-
pressed sex, Heaven has considerately made
it brief.

Firmness is my persistency; obstinacy is
yours.

A little heap of dust,
A little streak of rust,
A stone without a name —
Lol hero, sword and fame.

Our vocabulary is defective; we give the
same name to woman's lack of temptation and
man's lack of opportunity.

" You scoundrel, you have wronged me,"
hissed the philosopher. " Mav you live for-
ever I"

The man who thinks that a garnet can be
made a ruby by setting it in brass is writing
"dialect" for publication.

"Who art thou, stranger, and what dost
thou seek?"

" I am Generosity, and I seek a person
named Gratitude."

" Then thou dost not deserve to find her."

or AMBROSE BIERCE BM

"True. I will go about my business and
think of her no more. But who art thou, to
be so wise?"

" I am Gratitude — farewell forever."

There was never a genius who was not
thought a fool until he disclosed himself;
whereas he is a fool then only.

The boundaries that Napoleon drew have
been effaced; the kingdoms that he set up
have disappeared. But all the armies and
statecraft of Europe cannot unsay what you
have said.

Strive not for singularity in dress;

Fools have the more and men of sense the

less.
To look original is not worth while,
But be in mind a little out of style.

A conqueror arose from the dead. "Yes-
terday," he said, " I ruled half the world."
" Please show me the half that you ruled,"
said an angel, pointing out a wisp of glowing
vapor floating in space. "That is the
world."

"Who art thou, shivering in thy furs?"
"My name is Avarice. What is thine?"
"Unselfishness."

846 THE COLLECTED WORKS

"Where is thy clothing, placid one?"
" Thou art wearing it."

To be comic is merely to be playful, but
wit is a serious matter. To laugh at it is to
confess that you do not understand.

If you would be accounted great by your
contemporaries, be not too much greater than
they.

To have something that he will not desire,
nor know that he has — such is the hope of
him who seeks the admiration of posterity.
The character of his work does not matter;
he is a humorist.

Women and foxes, being weak, are distin-
guished by superior tact.

To fatten pigs, confine and feed them; to
fatten rogues, cultivate a generous disposi-
tion.

Every heart is the lair of a ferocious ani-
mal. The greatest wrong that you can put
upon a man is to provoke him to let out his
beast.

When two irreconcilable propositions are
presented for assent the safest way is to thank
Heaven that we are not as the unreasoning
brutes, and believe both.

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 34T

Truth is more deceptive than falsehood,
for it is more frequently presented by those
from whom we do not expect it, and so has
against it a numerical presumption.

A bad marriage is like an electrical thrill-
ing machine: it makes you dance, but you
can't let go.

Meeting Merit on a street-crossing, Suc-
cess stood still. Merit stepped off into the
mud and went round him, bowing his apol-
ogies, which Success had the grace to accept.

" I think," says the philosopher divine,
" Therefore I am." Sir, here^s a surer sign :
We know we live, for with our every breath
We feel the fear and imminence of death.

The first man you meet is a fool. If you
do not think so ask him and he will prove it.

He who would rather inflict injustice than
suffer it will always have his choice, for no
injustice can be done to him.

There are as many conceptions of a per-
fect happiness hereafter as there are minds
that have marred their happiness here.

We yearn to be, not what we are, but what

348 THE COLLECTED WORKS

we are not. If we were immortal weshoulH
not crave immortality.

A rabbit's foot may bring good luck to
you, but it brought none to the rabbit.

Before praising the wisdom of the man
who knows how to hold his tongue ascer-
tain if he knows how to hold his pen.

The most charming view in the world is
obtained by introspection.

Love is unlike chess, in that the pieces are
moved secretly and the player sees most of
the game. But the looker-on has one incom-
parable advantage: he is not the stake.

It is not for nothing that tigers choose to
hide in the jungle, for commerce and trade
are carried on, mostly, in the open.

We say that we love, not whom we will,
but whom we must. Our judgment need
not, therefore, go to confession.

Of two kinds of temporary insanity, one
ends in suicide, the other in marriage.

If you give alms from compassion, why re-
quire the beneficiary to be " a deserving ob-
ject"? No other adversity is so sharp as dest-
itution of merit.

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 349

Bereavement is the name that selfishness
gives to a particular privation.

O proud philanthropist, your hope is vain
To get by giving what you lost by gain.
With every gift you do but swell the cloud
Of witnesses against you, swift and loud —
Accomplices who turn and swear you split
Your life: half robber and half hypocrite.
You're least unsafe when most intact you

. hold
Your curst allotment of dishonest gold.

The highest and rarest form of content-
ment is approval of the success of another.

If Inclination challenge, stand and fight —
From Opportunity the wise take flight.

What a woman most admires in a man is
distinction among men. What a man most
admires in a woman is devotion to himself.

Those who most loudly invite God's atten-
tion to themselves when in peril of death are
those who should most fervently wish to es-
cape his observation.

When you have made a catalogue of your
friend's faults it is only fair to supply him
with a duplicate, so that he may know yours.

How fascinating is Antiquity! — in what a

850 THE COLLECTED WORKS

golden haze the ancients lived their lives I
We, too, are ancients. Of our enchanting
time Posterity's great poets will sing immort-
al songs, and its archaeologists will rever-
ently uncover the foundations of our palaces
and temples. Meantime we swap jack-
knives.

Observe, my son, with how austere a vir-
tue the man without a cent puts aside the
temptation to manipulate the market or ac-
quire a monopoly.

For study of the good and the bad in wo-
man two women are a needless expense.

"There's no free will," says the philosopher;

"To hang is most unjust."
" There is no free will," assents the ofEcer;

" We hang because we must."

Hope is an explorer who surveys the coun-
try ahead. That is why we know so much
about the Hereafter and so little about the
Heretofore.

Remembering that it was a woman who
lost the world, we should accept the act of
cackling geese in saving Rome as partial
reparation.

There are two classes of women who may

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 351

(do as they please; those who are rich and
those who are poor. The former can count
on assent, the latter on inattention.

When into the house of the heart Curios-
ity is admitted as the guest of Love she turns
her host out of doors.

Happiness has not to all the same name:
to Youth she is known as the Future; Age
knows her as the Dream.

"Who art thou, there in the mire?"
*' Intuition. I leaped all the way from
where thou standest in fear on the brink of
the bog."

" A great feat, madam ; accept the admira-
tion of Reason, sometimes known as Dry-
foot."

In eradicating an evil, it makes a differ-
ence whether it is uprooted or rooted up.
The difference is in the reformer.

The Audible Sisterhood rightly affirms
the equality of the sexes: no man is so base
but some woman is base enough to love him.

Having no eyes in the back of the head, we
see ourselves on the verge of the outlook.
Only he who has accomplished the notable

352 THE COLLECTED WORKS

feat of turning about knows himself the cen-
tral figure in the universe.

Truth is so good a thing that falsehood can
not afford to be without it.

If women did the writing of the world, in-
stead of the talking, men would be regarded
as the superior sex in beauty, grace and good-
ness.

Love is a delightful day's journey. At the
farther end kiss your companion and say fare-
well.

Let him who would wish to duplicate his
every experience prate of the value of life.

The game of discontent has its rules, and
he who disregards them cheats. It is not
permitted to you to wish to add another's ad-
vantages or possessions to your own; you arc
permitted only to wish to be another.

The creator and arbiter of beauty is the
heart; to the male rattlesnake the female rat-
tlesnake is the loveliest thing in nature.

Thought and emotion dwell apart. When
the heart goes into the head there is no dis-
sension; only an eviction.

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 353

If you want to read a perfect book there is
only one way : write it.

"Where goest thou, Ignorance?"

"To fortify the mind of a maiden against
a peril."

" I am going thy way. My name is Know-
ledge."

" Scoundrel! Thou art the peril."

A prude is one who blushes modestly at
the indelicacy of her thoughts and virtuously
flies from the temptation of her desires.

The man who is always taking you by the
hand is the same who if you were hungry
would take you by the cafe.

When a certain sovereign wanted war he
threw out a diplomatic intimation; when
ready, a diplomat.

If public opinion were determined by a
throw of the dice, it would in the long run
be half the time right.

The gambling known as business looks
with austere disfavor upon the business
known as gambling.

A virtuous widow is the most loyal of mort-
als; she is faithful to that which is neither
pleased nor profited by her fidelity.

354 THE COLLECTED WORKS

Of one who was " foolish " the creators of
our language said that he was " fond." That
we have not definitely reversed the meanings
of the words should be set down to the credit
of our courtesy.

Rioting gains its end by the power of
numbers. To a believer in the wisdom and
goodness of majorities it is not permitted to
denounce a successful mob.

Artistically set to grace

The wall of a dissecting-place,

A human pericardium

Was fastened with a bit of gum,

While, simply underninning it,

The one word, " Charity," was writ

To show the student band that hovered

About it what it once had covered.

Virtue is not necessary to a good reputa-
tion, but a good reputation is helpful to vir-
tue.

When lost in a forest go always down hill.
When lost in a philosophy or doctrine go up-
ward.

We submit to the majority because we have
to. But we are not compelled to call our at-
titude of subjection a posture of respect.

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 355

Pascal says that an inch added to the
length of Cleopatra's nose would have
changed the fortunes of the world. But hav-
ing said this, he has said nothing, for all the
forces of nature and all the power of dynast-
ies could not have added an inch to the length
of Cleopatra's nose.

Our luxuries are always masquerading as
necessaries. Woman is the only necessary
having the boldness and address to compel
recognition as a luxury.

" I am the seat of the affections," said the
heart.

"Thank you," said the judgment, "you
save my face."

" Who art thou that weepest? "

"Man."

" Nay, thou art Egotism. I am the Scheme
of the Universe. Study me and learn that
nothing matters."

" Then how does it matter that I weep?"

A slight is less easily forgiven than an in-
jury, because it implies something of con-
tempt, indifference, an overlooking of our
importance; whereas an injury presupposes
some degree of consideration. "The black-

356 THE COLLECTED WORKS

guards ! " said a traveler whom Sicilian brig-
ands had released without ransom ; " did
they think me a person of no consequence? "

The people's plaudits are unheard in hell.

Generosity to a fallen foe is a virtue that
takes no chances.

If there was a world before this we must
all have died impenitent.

We are what we laugh at. The stupid
person is a poor joke, the clever, a good one.

If every man who resents being called a
rogue resented being one this would be a
world of wrath.

Force and charm are important elements
of character, but it counts for little to be
stronger than honey and sweeter than a
lion.

Grief and discomfiture are coals that cool :
Why keep them glowing with thy sighs,
poor fool?

A popular author is one who writes what
the people think. Genius invites them to
think something else.

Asked to describe the Deity, a donkey
would represent him with long ears and a

" OF AMBROSE BIERCE 357

tail. Man's conception is higher and truer:
he thinks of him as somewhat resembling a
man.

Christians and camels receive their bur-
dens kneeling.

The sky is a concave mirror in which Man
sees his own distorted image and seeks to pro-
pitiate it.

Honor thy father and thy mother that thy
days may be long in the land, but do not hope
that the life insurance companies will offer
thee special rates.

Persons who are horrified by what they be-
lieve to be Darwin's theory of the descent of
Man from the Ape may find comfort in the
hope of his return.

A strong mind is more easily impressed
than a weak: you shall not so readily con-
vince a fool that you are a philosopher as a
philosopher that you are a fool.

A cheap and easy cynicism rails at every-
thing. The master of the art accomplishes
the formidable task of discrimination.

When publicly censured our first instinct
is to make everybody a codefendant.

358 THE COLLECTED WORKS

O lady fine, fear not to lead
To Hymen's shrine a clown:

Love cannot level up, indeed,
But he can level down.

Men are polygamous by nature and mo-
nogamous for opportunity. It is a faithful
man who is willing to be watched by a half-
dozen wives.

The virtues chose Modesty to be their
queen.

" I did not know that I was a virtue," she
said. "Why did you not choose Inno-
cence? "

" Because of her ignorance," they replied.
" She knows nothing but that she is a virtue."

It is a wise " man's man " who knows what
it is that he despises in a " ladies' man."

If the vices of women worshiped their
creators men would boast of the adoration
they inspire.

The only distinction that democracies re-
ward is a high degree of conformity.

Slang is the speech of him who robs the
literary garbage carts on their way to the
dumps.

^ OF AMBROSE BIERCE 359

A woman died who had passed her life in
affirming the superiority of her sex.

" At last," she said, " I shall have rest and
honors."

"Enter," said Saint Peter; "thou shalt
wash the faces of the dear little cherubim."

To woman a general truth has neither
value nor interest unless she can make a part-
icular application of it. And we say that
women are not practical!

The ignorant know not the depth of their
ignorance, but the learned know the shallow-
ness of their learning.

He who relates his success in charming
woman's heart may be assured of his failure
to charm man's ear.

What poignant memories the shadows

bring;
What songs of triumph in the dawning ring!
By night a coward and by day a king.

When among the graves of thy fellows,
walk with circumspection ; thine own is open
at thy feet.

As the physiognomist takes his own face
as the highest type and standard, so the critic's
theories are imposed by his own limitations.

360 THE COLLECTED WORKS

" Heaven lies about us in our infancy," anci
our neighbors take up the tale as we mature.

" My laws," she said, "are of myself a part:
I read them by examining my heart."
"True," he replied; "like those to Moses

known.
Thine also are engraven upon stone."

Love is a distracted attention: from con-
templation of one's self one turns to consider
one's dream.

"Halt! — ^who goes there?"

" Death."

"Advance, Death, and give the counter-
sign."

"How needless! I care not to enter thy
camp to-night. Thou shalt enter mine."

"What I I a deserter?"

"Nay, a great soldier. Thou shalt over-
come all the enemies of mankind."

"Who are they?"

" Life and the Fear of Death."

The palmist looks at the wrinkles made by
closing the hand and says they signify char-
acter. The philosopher reads character by
what the hand most loves to close upon.

^ OF AMBROSE BIERCE 361

Ah, woe is his, with length of living cursed,
Who, nearing second childhood, had no

first.
Behind, no glimmer, and before no ray —
A night at either end of his dark day.

A noble enthusiasm in praise of Woman is
not incompatible with a spirited zeal in de-
famation of women.

The money-getter who pleads his love of
work has a lame defense, for love of work at
money-getting is a lower taste than love of
money.

He who thinks that praise of mediocrity
atones for disparagement of genius is like one
who should plead robbery in excuse of theft.

The most disagreeable form of masculine
hypocrisy is that which finds expression in
pretended remorse for impossible gallantries.

Any one can say that which is new; any
one that which is true. For that which is
both new and true we must go duly accred-
ited to the gods and await their pleasure.

The test of truth is Reason, not Faith ; for
to the court of Reason must be submitted even
the claims of Faith.

362 THE COLLECTED WORKS

"Whither goest thou?" said the angel.

" I know not."

"And whence hast thou come?"

" I know not."

"But who art thou?"

" I know not."

"Then thou art Man. See that thou turn
not back, but pass on to the place whence
thou hast come."

If Expediency and Righteousness are not
father and son they are the most harmonious
brothers that ever were seen.

Train the head, and the heart will take care
of itself; a rascal is one who knows not how
to think.

Do you to others as you would

That others do to you ;
But see that you no service good
Would have from others that they could

Not rightly do.

Taunts are allowable in the case of an ob-
stinate husband: balky horses may best be
made to go by having their ears bitten.

Adam probably regarded Eve as the
woman of his choice, and exacted a certain
gratitude for the distinction of his preference.

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 363

A man is the sum of his ancestors; to re-
form him you must begin with a dead ape and
work downward through a million graves.
He IS like the lower end of a suspended
chain ; you can sway him slightly to the right
or the left, but remove your hand and he falls
into line with the other links.

He who thinks with difEculty believes with
alacrity. A fool is a natural proselyte, but
he must be caught young, for his convictions,
unlike those of the wise, harden with age.

These are the prerogatives of genius: To
know without having learned; to draw just
conclusions from unknown premises; to dis-
cern the soul of things.

Although one love a dozen times, yet will
the latest love seem the first. He who says
he has loved twice has not loved once.

Men who expect universal peace through
invention of destructive weapons of war are
no wiser than one who, noting the improve-
ment of agricultural implements, should
prophesy an end to the tilling of the soil.

To parents only, death brings an inconsol-
able sorrow. When the young die and the
old live, nature's machinery is working with
the friction that we name grief.

364 THE COLLECTED WORKS

Empty wine-bottles have a bad opinion of
women.

Civilization is the child of human ignor-
ance and conceit. If Man knew his insig-
nificance in the scheme of things he would
not think it worth while to rise from barbar-
ity to enlightenment. But it is only through
enlightenment that he can know.

Along the road of life are many pleasure
resorts, but think not that by tarrying in them
you will take more days to the journey. The
day of your arrival is already recorded.

The most offensive egotist is he that fears
to say "I" and "me." "It will probably
rain " — that is dogmatic. " I think it will
rain" — that is natural and modest. Mon-
taigne is the most delightful of essayists be-
cause so great is his humility that he does not
think it important that we see not Montaigne.
He so forgets himself that he employs no art-
ifice to make us forget him.

On fair foundations Theocrats unwise
Rear superstructures that offend the skies.
" Behold," they cry, " this pile so fair and

tall!
Come dwell within it and be happy all."

DE AMBROSE BIERCE 365

But they alone inhabit it, and find,
Poor fools, 'tis but a prison for the mind.

If thou wilt not laugh at a rich man's wit
thou art an anarchist, and if thou take not
his word thou shalt take nothing that he
hath. Make haste, therefore, to be civil to
thy betters, and so prosper, for prosperity is
the foundation of the state.

Death is not the end ; there remains the lit-
igation over the estate.

When God makes a beautiful woman, the
devil opens a new register.

When Eve first saw her reflection in a pool,
she sought Adam and accused him of infi-
delity.

"Why dost thou weep?"

" For the death of my wife. Alas! I shall
never again see her!"

"Thy wife will never again see thee, yet
she does not weep."

What theology is to religion and jurispru-
dence to justice, etiquette is to civility.

"Who art thou that despite the piercing
cold and thy robe's raggedness seemest to en-
joy thyself?"

366 THE COLLECTED WORKS

" Naught else is enjoyable — I am Content-
ment."

"Ha! thine must be a magic shirt Off
with it! I shiver in my fine attire."

" I have no shirt. Pass on, Success."

Ignorance when inevitable is excusable.
It may be harmless, even beneficial ; but it is
charming only to the unwise. To affect a
spurious ignorance is to disclose a genuine.

Because you will not take by theft what
you can have by cheating, think not yours is
the only conscience in the world. Even he
who permits you to cheat his neighbor will
shrink from permitting you to cheat himself.

"God keep thee, stranger; what is thy
name?"

"Wisdom. And thine?"

" Knowledge. How does it happen that
we meet? "

" This is an intersection of our paths."

" Will it ever be decreed that we travel al-
ways the same road?"

" We were well named if we knew."

Nothing is more logical than persecution.
Religious tolerance is a kind of infidelity.

^

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 367

Convictions are variable ; to be always con-
sistent is to be sometimes dishonest.

The philosopher's profoundest conviction
is that which he is most reluctant to express,
lest he mislead.

When exchange of identities is possible, be
careful; you may choose a person who is
willing.

The most intolerant advocate is he who is
trying to convince himself.

In the Parliament of Otumwee the Chan-
cellor of the Exchequer proposed a tax on
fools.

"The right honorable and generous gen-
tleman," said a member, " forgets that we al-
ready have it in the poll tax."

"Whose dead body is that?"

" Credulity's."

" By whom was he slain?"

" Credulity."

"Ah, suicide."

"No, surfeit. He dined at the table of
Science, and swallowed all that was set before
him."

Don't board with the devil if you wish to
be fat.

368 THE COLLECTED WORKS

Pray do not despise your delinquent
debtor; his default is no proof of poverty.

Courage is the acceptance of the gambler's
chance: a brave man bets against the game of
the gods.

"Who art thou?"
"A philanthropist. And thou?"
" A pauper."

" Away! you have nothing to relieve my
need."

Youth looks forward, for nothing is behind ;
Age backward, for nothing is before.

Think not, O man, the world has any need
That thou canst truly serve by word or deed.
Serve thou thy better self, nor care to know
How God makes righteousness and roses
grow.

In spiritual matters material aids are not
to be despised: by the use of an organ and a
painted window an artistic emotion can be
made to seem a religious ecstasy.

The poor man's price of admittance to the
favor of the rich is his self-respect. It as-
sures him a seat in the gallery.

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 369

One may know oneself ugly, but there is no
mirror for the understanding.

If the righteous thought death what they
think they think it they would search less dili-
gently for divine ordinances against suicide.

Weep not for cruelty to rogues in jail:

Injustice can the just alone assail.

Deny compassion to the wretch who

swerved,
Till all who, fainting, walked aright are

served.

The artless woman may be known by her
costume: her gown is trimmed with feathers
of the white blackbird.

All are lunatics, but he who can analyze
his delusion is called a philosopher.

Slang is a foul pool at which every dunce
fills his bucket, and then sets up as a fountain.

The present is the frontier between the
desert of the past and the garden of the fut-
ure. It is redrawn every moment.

The virtue that is not automatic requires
more attention than it is worth.

At sunset our shadows reach the stars, yet
we are no greater at death than at the noon
of life.

370 THE COLLECTED WORKS

Experience is a revelation in the light of
which we renounce the errors of jrouth for
those of age.

From childhood to youth is eternity; from
youth to manhood, a season. Age comes in
a night and is incredible.

Avoid the disputatious. When you greet
an acquaintance with " How are you?" and
he replies: "On the contrary, how are you?"
pass on.

If all thought were audible none would be
deemed discreditable. We know, indeed,
that bad thoughts are universal, but that is
not the same thing as catching them at
being so.

"All the souls in this place have been
happy ever since you blundered into it," said
Satan, ejecting Hope. " You make trouble
wherever you go."

Our severest retorts are unanswerable be-
cause nobody is present to answer them.

The angels have good dreams and bad, and
we are the dreams. When an angel wakes
one of us dies.

The man of " honor " pays his bet
By saving on his lawful debt.

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 371

When he to Nature pays his dust
(Not for he would, but for he must)
Men say, " He settled that, 'tis true,
But, faith, it long was overdue."

Do not permit a woman to ask forgiveness,
for that is only the first step. The second is
justification of herself by accusation of you.

If we knew nothing was behind us we
should discern our true relation to the uni-
verse.

Youth has the sun and the stars by which to
determine his position on the sea of life ; Age
must sail by dead reckoning and knows not
whither he is bound.

Happiness is lost by criticising it; sorrow
by accepting it.

As Nature can not make us altogether
wretched she resorts to the trick of contrast
by making us sometimes almost happy.

When prosperous the fool trembles for the
evil that is to come ; in adversity the philoso-
pher smiles for the good that he has had.

When God saw how faulty was man He
tried again and made woman. As to why He
then stopped there are two opinions. One
of them is woman's.

372 THE COLLECTED WORKS

She hated him because he discovered that
her lark was a crow. He hated her because
she unlocked the cage of his beast.

"Who art thou?"
" Friendship."

" I am Love ; let us travel together."
"Yes — for a day's journey; then thou ar-
rivest at thy grave."
"And thou?"
" I go as far as the grave of Advantage."

Look far enough ahead and always thou
shalt see the domes and spires of the City of
Contentment.

You would say of that old man : " He is
bald and bent." No; in the presence of
Death he uncovers and bows.

If you saw Love pictured as clad in furs
you would smile. Yet every year has its
winter.

You can not disprove the Great Pyramid
by showing the impossibility of putting the
stones in place.

Men were singing the praises of Justice.
" Not so loud," said an angel ; " if you wake
her she will put you all to death."

Age, with his eyes in the back of his head,

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 373

thinks it wisdom to see the bogs through
which he has floundered.

Wisdom is known only by contrasting it
with folly; by shadow only we perceive that
all visible objects are not flat. Yet Philan-
thropos would abolish evil!

One whose falsehoods no longer deceive
has forfeited the right to speak truth.

Wisdom is a special knowledge in excess
of all that is known.

To live is to believe. The most credulous
of mortals is he who is persuaded of his
incredulity.

In him who has never wronged another, re-
venge is a virtue.

That you can not serve God and Mammon
IS a poor excuse for not serving God.

A fool's tongue is not so noisy but the wise
can hear his ear commanding them to silence.

If the Valley of Peace could be reached
only by the path of love, it would be sparsely
inhabited.

To the eye of failure success is an accident
with a presumption of crime.

Wearing his eyes in his heart, the optimist

374 THE COLLECTED WORKS

falls over his own feet, and calls it Progress.

You can calculate your distance from Hell
by the number of wayside roses. They are
thickest at the hither end of the route.

The world was made a sphere in order that
men should not push one another off, but the
landowner smiles when he thinks of the sea.

Let not the night on thy resentment fall :
Strike when the wrong is fresh, or not at all.
The lion ceases if his first leap fail —
'Tis only dogs that nose a cooling trail.

Having given out all the virtues that He
had made, God made another.

" Give us that also," said His children.

" Nay," He replied, *^ if I give you that
you will slay one another till none is left. You
shall have only its name, which is Justice."

" That is a good name," they said ; " we will
give it to a virtue of our own creation."

So they gave it to Revenge.

The sea-bird speeding from the realm of

night
Dashes to death against the beacon-light.
Learn from its evil fate, ambitious soul.
The ministry of light is guide, not goal.

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 375

While you have a future do not live too
much in contemplation of your past: unless
you are content to walk backward the mirror
is a poor guide.

" O dreadful Death, why veilest thou thy

face? "
" To spare me thine impetuous embrace."

He who knows himself great accepts the
truth in reverent silence, but he who only be-
lieves himself great has embraced a noisy
faith.

Life is a little plot of light. We enter,
clasp a hand or two, and go our several ways
back into the darkness. The mystery is in-
finitely pathetic and picturesque.

Cheerfulness is the religion of the little.
The low hills are a-smirk with flowers and
greenery; the dominating peaks, austere and
desolate, holding a prophecy of doom.

It is not to our credit that women like best
the men who are not as other men, nor to
theirs that they are not particular as to the
nature of the difference.

In the journey of life when thy shadow falls
to the westward stop until it falls to the east-
ward. Thou art then at thy destination.

376 THE COLLECTED WORKS

Seek not for happiness — 'tis known
To hope and memory alone;
At dawn — how bright the noon will be!
At eve — how fair it glowed, ah, me!

Brain was given to test the heart's credi-
bility as a witness, yet the philosopher's lady
is almost as fine as the clown's wench.

"Who art thou, so sorrowful?"

" Ingratitude. It saddens me to look upon
the devastations of Benevolence."

"Then veil thine eyes, for I am Benevo-
lence."

"Wretch! thou art my father and my
mother."

Death is the only prosperity that we neither
desire for ourselves nor resent in others.

To the small part of ignorance that we can
arrange and classify we give the name Know-
ledge.

" I wish to enter," said the soul of the vo-
luptuary. "I am told that all the beautiful
women are here."

"Enter," said Satan, and the soul of the
voluptuary passed in.

"They make the place what it is," added
Satan, as the gates clanged.

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 377

Woman would be more charming if one
could fall into her arms without falling into
her hands.

Think not to atone for wealth by apology:
you must make restitution to the accuser.

Study good women and ignore the rest,
For he best knows the sex who knows the
best.

Before undergoing a surgical operation ar-
range your temporal affairs. You may live.

Intolerance is natural and logical, for in
every dissenting opinion lies an assumption
of superior wisdom.

"Who art thou?" said Saint Peter at the
Gate.

" I am known as Memory."

"What presumption! — go back to Hell.
And who, perspiring friend, art thou?"

*'My name is Satan. I am looking
for "

"Take your penal apparatus and be off."

And Satan, laying hold of Memory, said:
"Come along, you scoundrel! you make hap-
piness wherever you are not."

Women of genius commonly have mascul-
ine faces, figures and manners. In trans-

878 THE COLLECTED WORKS

planting brains to an alien soil God leaves a
little of the original earth clinging to the
roots.

The heels of Detection are sore from the
toes of Remorse.

Twice we see Paradise. In youth we
name it Life ; in age, Youth.

There are but ten Commandments, true,
But that's no hardship, friend, to you ;
The sins whereof no line is writ
You're not commanded to commit.

Fear of the darkness is more than an inher-
ited superstition — it is at night, mostly, that
the king thinks.

"Who art thou?" said Mercy.
" Revenge, the father of Justice."
" Thou wearest thy son's clothing."
"One must be clad."
"Farewell — I go to attend thy son."
" Thou wilt find him hiding in yonder
jungle."

Self-denial is indulgence of a propensity to
forego.

Men talk of selecting a wife; horses, of se-
lecting an owner.

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 3T9

You are not permitted to kill a woman who
has wronged you, but nothing forbids you to
reflect that she is growing older every min-
ute. You are avenged fourteen hundred and
forty times a day.

A sweetheart is a bottle of wine; a wife is
a wine-bottle.

He gets on best with women who best
knows how to get on without them.

"Who am I?" asked an awakened soul.

" That is the only knowledge jthat is denied
to you here," answered a smiling angel ; " this
is Heaven."

Woman's courage is ignorance of danger;
man's is hope of escape.

When God had finished this terrestrial

frame
And all things else, with or without a name.
The Nothing that remained within His

hand
Said: "Make me into something fine and

grand.
Thine angels to amuse and entertain."
God heard and made it into human brain.

If you wish to slay your enemy make haste,

880 THE COLLECTED WORKS

O make haste, for already Nature's knife is
at his throat and yours.

To most persons a sense of obligation is in-
supportable; beware upon whom you in-
flict it.

Bear me, good oceans, to some isle

Where I may never fear
The snake alurk in woman's smile,

The tiger in her tear.
Yet bear not with me her, O deeps.
Who never smiles and never weeps.

Life and Death threw dice for a child.
" I win!" cried Life.

" True," said Death, " but you need a nim-
bler tongue to proclaim your luck. The
stake is already dead of age."

How blind is he who, powerless to discern
The glories that about his pathway burn.
Walks unaware the avenues of Dream,
Nor sees the domes of Paradise agleam!
O Golden Age, to him more nobly planned
Thy light lies ever upon sea and land.
From sordid scenes he lifts his eyes at will.
And sees a Grecian god on every hill !

In childhood we expect, in youth demand,
in manhood hope, and in age beseech.

OF AMBROSE BIERCE 381

A violet softly sighed,

A hollyhock shouted above.
In the heart of the violet, pride;

In the heart of the hollyhock, love.

If women knew^ themselves the fact that
men do not know them would flatter them
less and content them more.

The angel with a flaming sword slept at
his post, and Eve slipped back into the Gar-
den. " Thank Heaven! I am again in Para-
dise," said Adam.

^j4